BOSTON – The opportunity for a payout from the misery of the 2017 season comes to the Toronto Blue Jays in the form of the 12th overall selection in next week’s draft, the highest pick they’ve had since choosing Jeff Hoffman at No. 9 and Max Pentecost at 11 in 2014.

Steve Sanders would certainly have preferred to be picking later during his second draft as amateur scouting director, as a spot in the upper 20s or No. 30 is very much the welcomed downside of a successful big-league season. Instead, he and the club’s amateur scouts from across the continent started gathering in Toronto over the weekend for a week of meetings to determine how the Blue Jays will line up their board and leverage their spot in the draft.

“When you’re picking where we are this year, the players you might have access to are typically a little bit different than where we were picking last year,” Sanders says during an interview. “The players may be different, but in essence the process really isn’t. We’re going to prioritize the same things, our process will be driven by our values and by the things that are important to us as a group.

“We’re really excited about the type of talent we’re going to add with the 12th pick this year.”

In its most recent mock draft, Baseball America suggested the Blue Jays would use their first selection on South Alabama outfielder Travis Swaggerty, with Florida third baseman Jonathan India and a trio of high-schoolers, Canadian catcher Noah Naylor, right-hander Ethan Hankins and third baseman Nolan Gorman listed as other possibilities.

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Without a doubt things remain fluid for all 30 clubs with six days left and little consensus beyond Auburn righty Casey Mize going first overall to Detroit. The Blue Jays will need to react to what’s happening in front of them as players’ expectations regarding signing bonuses come into focus and teams consider ways to manipulate their spending pools.

“There’s still a lot of uncertainty about what’s going to happen in the first round, particularly in front of us,” says Sanders. “We’re really preparing for anything and everything. That will be a large part of the discussion with the staff over the course of the week. The top 11 picks could go a number of different ways and that could lead to a number of different results for us.”

The 12th overall pick has an assigned value of $4,200,900 and makes up the majority of the Blue Jays’ $7,982,100 spending pool for picks in the first 10 rounds. Players selected in rounds 11-40 can receive a bonus of up to $100,000 with any overage counting against a team’s pool. Teams that exceed their bonus pool by 0-5 per cent are charged a tax of 75 per cent while overages beyond that threshold are penalized with the loss of future picks as well as an escalating tax.

The Blue Jays did some manipulating of their pool last year, signing a handful of players for less than their spot’s assigned value, reallocating the money to their two first-rounders – shortstop Logan Warmoth got $25,000 over while right-hander Nate Pearson picked up an extra $150,000 – second-round catcher Hagen Danner ($456,800 above slot) and 14th round first baseman P.K. Morris ($106,500).

Danner was somewhat of an aberration for the Blue Jays last year as the only high school player they picked among their first 14 selections. They didn’t take another prep player until Morris and selected only 10 high-schoolers overall.

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In recent years the Blue Jays have tended to be more aggressive with high school players, taking on the increased volatility they come with for the potential of a higher ceiling. Sanders insisted the 2017 split didn’t mark any sort of shift in approach.

“There’s no concerted effort on our part, necessarily, to target a certain demographic,” he says. “The way the board plays out is the result of a number of factors, a lot of which are outside our control. Our goal going into every draft, whether we’re picking 12th or 30th is to obviously add as much impactful talent as we can to the organization.

“Sometimes that’s going to be high school players, sometimes that’s going to be junior college players, pitchers, hitters. For us a lot of times it’s being flexible to what the draft makes available to us in a given spot.”

That will be one area that bears watching, as does the number of Canadians the Blue Jays end up picking. Selecting Naylor, a Mississauga, Ont., native who is the younger brother of 2015 Marlins first-rounder Josh Naylor, would be intriguing, although they’ll also be watched to see if they give a few Canadians an opportunity during the organizational rounds of the draft.

“We take a lot of pride in being the only team in Canada, it’s incredibly important to us,” says Sanders. “As a result, we pour a ton of time and resources and really a ton of effort into scouting Canada, and not just scouting it from a draft perspective, but obviously having a strong presence in amateur baseball in Canada, whether that’s working with T.J. [Burton] and his staff on T12, or expanding our Canadian scouting staff over the last couple of years.

“We feel we’re as well positioned as any with the Canadian amateur talent base and we hope that’s only going to continue to grow. Whether that’s in the early rounds or in the late rounds, we certainly want to make sure that the Blue Jays are well represented and have a strong presence in the country up here.”