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TORONTO — Burrowed into a makeshift office lined with random memorabilia stacked in a way that more resembles a closet than a display sits Steve Sanders.

Hired away from the Boston Red Sox in September of 2016 to be the new Blue Jays director of amateur scouting, Sanders, despite the derelict office setting, is feeling much more at home in his second go-round leading the Toronto draft table.

“My first year was a learning experience for me, and probably for a lot of us, but we’re taking this year as an opportunity to build on last year’s process, on last year’s draft, just getting better every year,” Sanders said last week, ahead of Monday’s MLB Draft.

“Every draft’s different. The players are different, the situations we’ll face are different, but having gone through it once, just from a comfort perspective, it’s certainly better.

“Like anything, you look back on years past and say, ‘Hey, where could we have done a little more work or dug a little deeper?’ I think in a lot of those areas, I feel like we’ve done that this year.”

In his first draft last June, Sanders was afforded the benefit of having a pair of first-round picks in the twenties, thanks to Edwin Encarnacion’s defection.

They ended up with Logan Warmoth, a shortstop out of the University of North Carolina, and Nate Pearson, a JUCO arm out of the College of Central Florida.

Pearson, despite some injury issues this season, is already being lauded by the industry as an excellent pick, with GM Ross Atkins even telling people this off-season that Pearson would have been in the conversation to go first overall had teams somehow been able to see his performance with short-season Vancouver pre-draft.

This time around, Sanders only has one first-rounder to play with, but his team’s 76-86 record on the field last season has him sitting in a bit more of a prime position with pick No. 12.

Once again, the Jays have been attached to a number of college players, including South Florida lefty Shane McClanahan and Mississippi lefty Ryan Rolison.

There has also been talk of a bat, potentially South Alabama outfielder Travis Swaggerty.

With the organization’s dearth of pitching in the upper minors, it makes sense to go the college route rather than wait four, five, six years on a high school arm, but Sanders is adamant it’s about talent, not timeline.

There’s no sense of urgency to add players who could arrive in the big leagues within the meat of the Vladimir Guerrero Jr. window, a five-to-six year timeline that will start in earnest next year.

“I don’t think specifically,” Sanders said. “Our goal is to add as much impact talent to the organization as we can. And, I think, the biggest thing is players dictate their own timelines often. High school guys and college guys may have different ETAs in the draft at this point in terms of what we think it’s going to take to get them to the big leagues, but sometimes those change. So, for us, trying to anticipate what that’s going to look like is hard enough as it is and that probably adds another layer of complexity.

“For us, we’re just focused on making sure we add the best possible players to our organization. Whether that’s high school guys, college guys, quick movers or high upside that may take a little while, we certainly take it into consideration, but as far as drafting to that type of need or timeline, I don’t think we’re particularly focused on that.”

There’s very little consensus when it comes to this year’s draft.

The thought is the Detroit Tigers will take Auburn right-hander Casey Mize first overall, but even that is no lock.

That’s left Sanders and his staffers spending ample amounts of time monitoring the rumour mill and mocking out various scenarios.

“There’s not a ton of consensus or clarity in the industry as far as how the draft’s going to go,” Sanders said. “So that adds an element of unknown for us, both with the first pick and with our subsequent picks. But, overall, I think we feel really good about the type of players we should have available to us in those first few rounds.

“What we have to do is prepare ourselves for any possible situation. We listen to the rumours, we’re aware of the guys who may be unlikely to get to our pick, but that being said, I think, when you’re picking 12 there’s obviously only 11 teams ahead of you, whereas last year there was 21. But the preparation is the same.”

The goal is to not be surprised.

No matter what happens on the draft board through the first 11 picks, Sanders wants to have a plan in place for when they’re on the clock.

There’s only so many ways it can unfold, and Sanders has gone over all of them.

“Shoot, it’s something I spend a lot of time running through my head when I’m trying to sleep at night,” he said with a slight grin.

The Jays will line up “800 some odd players” on their board heading into the draft, and they’ll end up drafting about 40 of them when all is said and done.

That makes for a lot of unknown past the first round.

“That’s what the hours in that room are about with the group of scouts,” Sanders said. “It’s not just me, it’s us as a group. There’s a lot of years of experience in draft rooms and it’s pulling all that collectively together with the front office and our player development group and our high performance group, and really trying to put our heads together and be prepared for every scenario.”