After months of stressing and poring over draft footage from an organization-wide database, the calmest moments of Matt Swanson’s MLB Draft came immediately before he made the Angels’ first-round pick on Monday night.

The Angels’ draft room, in their offices attached to Angel Stadium, featured enough laptops for an entire electronics store, each containing a novel’s worth of information on each top prospect, from medical histories to traditional scouting reports to the treasured TrackMan data procured from pre-draft workouts. With a pick in the middle of the first round at 15th overall, Swanson, the Angels’ scouting director, could not limit his options.

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But amid all the new-wave technology and absolute pure efficiency, Swanson wanted to keep at least one old-school element in the room. In the days leading up to the draft, Swanson asked to have labels printed and placed on a set of magnets. By the time the Angels’ pick arrived Monday, more than an hour into the draft, Swanson didn’t rely on a complicated algorithm. Instead, he looked at the array of magnets, picked one and placed it on the board.

“There’s just almost like a sense of relief, when that’s done,” Swanson said. “It’s like, ‘OK, we have one in the rearview mirror now.’ Now we have 39 more to go.”

The blend of traditional scouting techniques and modern baseball aptitude has made the 36-year-old Swanson a rising star in an industry that, a little more than a decade ago, he knew little about.

He has been proficient in taking big swings in the draft in recent years, but turned heads Monday when he went against several public mock drafts and selected North Carolina State infielder Will Wilson.

“I think he has a lot of what we value,” Swanson said late Monday night. “Sometimes, upside and impact just kind of manifest itself in different ways … sometimes it just comes in different packages. I think Will emulates a lot of what we’re looking for potentially offensively.”

In some ways, the Angels stuck with their drafting philosophy in selecting Wilson. After going undrafted out of King’s Mountain (N.C.) High School, Wilson shot up draft boards with his college production, hitting 39 homers and posting a .992 OPS over his three seasons with N.C. State. As a junior, Wilson slashed .361/.450/.703 with 16 home runs in 202 at-bats.

However, scouts may not project Wilson to have the exceptional tools the Angels looked for in previous selections, such as 2017 and 2018 first-rounders Jo Adell and Jordyn Adams. Wilson is also the first collegiate first-rounder under Swanson’s stewardship (general manager Billy Eppler chose then-Virginia catcher Matt Thaiss in the first round in 2016). But Wilson, a shortstop, provides a potential power bat and solidifies some of the organization’s infield depth. There has been some concern among scouts that Wilson’s lack of lateral quickness might result in a move to second base.

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“He’s a really good blend,” Swanson said. “There is a lot of high-end upside for him as a hitter as well. For us, he’s going to develop as a shortstop and we’ll see where that goes.”

The Angels went with major upside in their second-round selection, taking prep shortstop Kyren Paris from Oakley, Calif., with the 55th overall pick. Paris doesn’t turn 18 until November, though most scouting reports laud his defensive tools and athleticism, which caused MLB Network analyst Jonathan Mayo to say, “There’s a lot of upside to dream on.”

Paris, despite his slight frame and youth, is an “awesome athlete,” Swanson said. “I think our scouting group was really surprised with the strength, the quick twitch, the wire strength that he’s going to have as he grows into his body.

“There’s going to be power in there someday. We’ve seen that a lot with middle infielders. That’s just kind of the nature of the game and how swings are developing. Certain players develop more power than just what you’d expect out of them.”

To understand the logic behind the Angels’ selections requires a deeper understanding of the man who’s doing the selecting.

Matt Swanson’s life in baseball could have easily ended that miserable, miserable year.

Swanson, then a junior super-reliever at Cal, was in the midst of a breakout 2004 campaign, posting a 2.97 ERA over 39 innings and earning plenty of interest from major-league scouts. But he wasn’t happy, uncertain about himself and his abilities. His first sport was basketball — a byproduct of his 6-foot-8 frame — but his abilities on the mound got him noticed. He went to Cal to further his chances at a career outside of baseball with a degree in social welfare — “I was always kind of passionate about helping people and being available for people,” he said — but he was increasingly feeling directionless.

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His father, David, had recently been diagnosed with prostate cancer and his health was constantly in the forefront of Swanson’s mind. After bad outings — and even the good ones — he walked off the mound and thought to himself, “Is this really what I want to do with my life?”

He spoke with his father and his mother, Connie, who advised him to give it his all for the rest of the season and see how he felt. Swanson also returned for his senior season, posting a 1.66 ERA in 48 ⅔ innings and turning himself into a draftable prospect, albeit without flashy stuff. He worried little about the draft but tracked it online until the Pirates picked him as a senior sign in the 13th round.

He got a phone call that day from Pirates scout Jared Madison, the start of a connection that would change Swanson’s life and eventual career. A brief minor-league stint ended in 2007 after three somewhat effective, yet unspectacular seasons, and Swanson attempted to return to a normal life and settle in. He thought he had a job he could rely on in finance, following his now cancer-free father’s footsteps.

But months into his job at New York Life, in Northern California, he realized he hated it. Nearly every spare moment was spent studying for his series 6, 7 and 66 exams to get licensed to sell mutual funds, annuities and insurance as well as give financial advice. Even the thought of it bored him.

“You’re just sitting there,” Swanson said. “You talk about hating every moment of a job, that was it. I remember, I would go into the office, and sit on a computer and look for other jobs just because it was never anything I was passionate about.”

That fall, Swanson received a call from a familiar name. It was Madison, now with the St. Louis Cardinals, asking if Swanson would be interested in becoming the club’s Northern California area scout. Swanson’s smarts had always stood out, with his natural gifts for numbers providing an enticing skill set, and one the Cardinals could dream on.

Swanson consulted with his wife, Sara — the two had been married just a couple months — before eventually taking the job.

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“I didn’t really know what an area scout was,” Swanson told The Athletic. “I just kind of jumped into it and ran with it.”

Swanson started with the 2009 draft class, a run with the Cardinals that included discovering or signing at least 10 future major leaguers such as Kolten Wong, Stephen Piscotty and Marco Gonzales. As Swanson’s family has grown — he and Sara have welcomed daughters Abigail and Leah and a son, Luke — Swanson’s reputation in the industry also grew. Within a few years, he became one of the organization’s national cross-checkers. In the fall of 2016, he became the Angels’ scouting director, his current position.

The 2019 draft is the third he’s run in Anaheim, as he looks to further bolster a suddenly healthy and thriving farm system. In his first draft, Swanson procured Adell, the best prospect the organization has seen since Mike Trout, with the 10th overall pick in 2017.

As he stood behind the batting cages at Angel Stadium last month, Swanson reflected on the evolution — both the team’s and his own. For a man who, 15 years ago, was unsure what he wanted to be, he feels he has found his calling. That afternoon, he stood with Angels Southern California area scout Ben Diggins to watch the debut of Griffin Canning, Swanson’s second-ever pick with the Angels and the first drafted and signed Angels starting pitching prospect to reach the majors since Garrett Richards debuted in 2011.

“Nights like these,” Swanson said, “never get old.”

From his earliest days as a scout, Swanson has shown an ability to go against the grain.

Jeff Luhnow remembers sitting with Swanson in the stands in the months leading up to the 2011 draft and being impressed at his ability to vouch for a player many in the industry had major questions on. Luhnow, now the Astros’ general manager, was serving as the Cardinals’ vice president of scouting and player development, sitting in to watch a speedy, left-handed-hitting second baseman from Hawaii. While many in the industry doubted Kolten Wong’s size and the level of competition he had faced, Swanson saw a gifted athlete and defender with a chance to flash some power. The Cardinals prioritized a mix of traditional scouting techniques along with advanced metrics, and Swanson was sold on Wong using both.

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Eventually, Swanson helped win over Luhnow and general manager John Mozeliak and the Cardinals selected Wong with the 22nd overall pick in 2011. Within two seasons, Wong was a big-leaguer.

“It turned out to be a pretty good pick,” Luhnow said. “(Swanson) would form his own opinions about players first, and then he would listen to other people who had diverging points of view and really try to appreciate why there were diverging points of view and incorporate that into his own evaluation.”

When Madison first brought Swanson into the Cardinals’ organization, St. Louis was looking for a new model of scout. They were hoping to go younger, looking for people with the eye and drive to potentially move into a larger cross-checker or even scouting director role.

“I was surrounded by a lot of very inquisitive people, not afraid to ask questions, not afraid to ask kind of dumb questions,” Swanson said. “I was very comfortable from day one, knowing what I don’t know and kind of getting to the bottom of it.”

Luhnow pointed out Swanson’s Cal education and brief foray into finance, and highlighted the then-26-year-old Swanson’s desires outside of baseball as what separated him from other candidates.

Swanson immediately became a critical hire, serving as the signing scout for the Cardinals’ first-round picks in 2011 (Wong), 2012 (Piscotty) and 2013 (Gonzales) along with Kyle Barraclough, Greg Garcia, Patrick Wisdom and others. By the 2014 season, the Cardinals elevated him to become Midwest cross-checker. Mozeliak said Swanson was “someone we saw growing into larger roles.”

“His resume pretty much speaks for itself,” said then-Cardinals scouting director Dan Kantrovitz, now the assistant general manager for Oakland. “Swanny’s the complete package: a leader, an evaluator and very analytical, too.”

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It wasn’t long until others took notice. Shortly after the 2016 draft, Swanson received a call from an unfamiliar phone number. It was Angels general manager Billy Eppler. Former scouting director Ric Wilson had been shifted to special assignment scout, and Eppler wanted Swanson to take Wilson’s place.

Swanson got off the phone and told Sara he was “going off the grid.” He spent the next five days preparing for the interview, attempting to lock down an opportunity he’d been preparing for since he, on a whim, took his first scouting job.

“I spent the better part of eight years directly or indirectly sort of preparing for that moment,” Swanson said. “That’s part of the challenges, you never know when that’s going to come.

“I was going to take my swing, and if I whiff, oh well. At least I have the conviction knowing that I stood my ground, these are the things that I believe in, and being OK with that.”

Swanson immediately stood out to an Angels contingent that included Eppler and assistant general managers Jonathan Strangio and Steve Martone. In that meeting, he laid out how the draft could build something special and sustainable, just as he had seen Luhnow do with Mozeliak in St. Louis during the 2000s. He would take big swings in the draft, looking to inject a barren farm system with star talent. He also outlined his background, his doubts about entering into a career in baseball and the passion that stemmed from it since.

“Matt stood out with his ability to see the whole picture, to see how he felt a draft could operate to kind of understand the inherent biases that we all carry as people when we see certain players or see certain players under certain conditions,” Eppler said. “He showed he was really able to kind of extrapolate out what’s real and what might be ‘happy talk,’ for lack of a better word.”

Matt Swanson’s first pick as Angels scouting director involved a big swing.

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Throughout his time with the Cardinals, Swanson had never been involved in a top-10 pick. But in the months before the 2017 draft, he became entranced with a lanky Kentucky teenager with a lightning-quick swing. The first time Swanson actually saw Jo Adell live, the then-Ballard High School outfielder homered in each of his first two at-bats. Swanson then went and called Eppler — they had their man for the No. 10 pick.

Now, Adell is the top prospect in the Angels’ system and one of the best in baseball. Canning, the club’s 2017 second-round pick, has skyrocketed through the system and is now a staple in the Angels’ rotation. In both selections — Adell, a high schooler with some swing-and-miss in his game, and Canning, a college right-hander with injury concerns — Swanson accepted a large amount of risk while hoping the upside paid off, though Eppler stresses it’s not a strategy the club is beholden to.

“It hasn’t been a playbook, as much as the narrative out there might try to shine light on it being a narrative,” Eppler said. “We are simply looking for the best player on the board at that moment in time. If they’re high school, athletic, upside plays, so be it. If it’s a polished collegiate pitcher, so be it.”

In selecting Jordyn Adams and Jeremiah Jackson, a pair of high school products, within the first two rounds of last year’s draft, Swanson again went for upside.

The Angels have demonstrated a preference toward athleticism and moldable products with high ceilings and, at times, low floors — a level of confidence placed in farm director Mike LaCassa’s stewardship.

It’s also indicative of how the Angels have chosen to build their roster. Since taking over in the fall of 2015, Eppler has prioritized players with years left of control, hoping to retain those assets as he replenished an organization with scant depth.

This has limited the Angels’ ability to acquire a mass of top-end prospects via trade and sell off to accelerate a rebuild. Now with upside in the system, the Angels have bolstered their depth with Wilson and Paris — who, as a Cal commit, left Swanson feeling as if he were “breaking his own heart” by plucking talent from his alma mater.

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“We have not been been trading players at the major-league level, like a lot of clubs would do in order to kind of expedite the process of building a farm system,” Eppler said. “We haven’t done that with players with control remaining, essentially because we want to provide every opportunity for our club to be a postseason contending team.”

In turn, the Angels’ prospect-acquisition process has been reliant on two major avenues: the international market and the draft.

Last November, Swanson, recognizing the dual focus, tried to fortify the bond between domestic and international scouting. Swanson sometimes joins international scouting director Carlos Gomez on international trips.

When the Angels conducted their 2018 exit interviews in Phoenix, Swanson coordinated with Gomez to have a scouting discussion session among their two groups. Some of Swanson’s domestic scouts spoke Spanish, and several of Gomez’s international scouts based out of Central and South America spoke English.

Over the course of four days, they didn’t discuss a single player. Instead, they studied the similarities in each of their demographics and in projecting players, trying to come up with a more efficient way of scouting. The two groups bonded over cornhole, other games and open discussion.

“I think in a setting like that there’s such a wealth of information from all over the world and from different age demographics and levels of experience, that I think sometimes the best thing you could do is shut your mouth and listen,” Swanson said. “I think in a lot of ways, that’s exactly what we did for four days, is just listen to each other and grow as a group.”

Swanson’s career in baseball has been made possible by his ability to see the landscape, adapt and advance. With his third draft for the Angels, he’s looking to burnish an already impressive draft resume and supplement the Angels’ next potential postseason run with a new wealth of prospects.

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And from there?

“I always kind of just viewed where I am and where I want to be long term as being very much focused on what I need to do today,” Swanson said. “But also, just mentally always preparing myself for whatever happens.

“(If) I end up being a scouting director with the Angels for the next dozen years, I feel now I’m in a position where I’m challenged every day, I’m learning something new every day. It’s something I’m deeply, deeply passionate about. I think my roots to my core are in scouting. I’m actually super content where I am. I think that’s a really, that’s a really cool thing to say, to know that I’m not trying to leverage anything for something else, that I’m very comfortable with where I am. That’s a really beautiful thing at the end of the day.”

The Athletic’s Jake Kaplan and Mark Saxon contributed to the reporting of this story.

Top photo of Will Wilson: Ben McKeown / Associated Press

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