When Kasey McKeon was a scout with the Cleveland Indians, he scouted a player at the University of Richmond. Big guy. Kind of slow. But the guy could hit and he had heart.

        McKeon convinced the Indians to pick him in the second round of the 1995 draft. That player is Sean Casey.

ON THE NET

Major League Baseball will broadcast live audio of the amateur draft today on www.majorleaguebaseball.com   Draft picks for the overall draft and individual teams will be updated almost instantaneously on teamonebaseball.com, taken from the MLB Netcast.

        McKeon, who is Reds manager Jack McKeon's son, is a national cross checker for the Reds now. He still puts a premium on heart.

        “Besides the obvious things,” McKeon said. “I look at intangibles and make-up.”

        “Make-up” is a word used a lot by the Reds brain trust. They want a player with the right attitude as well as the right ability. They'll take that philosophy into today's annual amateur draft. The Reds have the 23rd pick in the first round as well as two “sandwich” picks between the first and second rounds as compensation for free agents Greg Vaughn and Juan Guzman.

        The hope is to find another player like Casey.

        First-round picks get nearly all the attention in the draft, and the Reds have not done well in the first round in the 1990s. Pokey Reese, the top pick in 1991, is the only No. 1 pick currently with the Reds. The Reds didn't have picks in 1993 and '95. They also missed big-time on a couple of picks — Chad Mottola in '92 and John Oliver in '96.

        But the scouting department has been completely revamped since those picks.

        “You shouldn't miss to that extent,” assistant general manager Doc Rodgers said. “Things have changed since then. Julian Mock was the scouting director. There wasn't input from people like Gary Hughes, Al Goldis and Bob Zuk.”

        Hughes and Goldis are special assistants to the general manager. Zuk is a senior adviser for scouting. All three have been added since 1996. DeJon Watson replaced Mock as scouting director in 1997. Leland Maddox was appointed senior director of player development and scouting in 1998. McKeon was added in 1998. Tim Naehring, another special assistant to the GM, was added in 1999.

        “We've doubled the amount of money we put into player development and scouting since 1996,” Reds chief operation officer John Allen said.

        Allen would not say what the budget is. But he did say the Reds are in the upper half of the major leagues as far as spending.

        Under previous owner Marge Schott, the Reds were last.

        “The difference is night and day,” Reds general manager Jim Bowden said. “We had an expansion staff. Now we have a world championship staff.”

        All the top scouts have been in Cincinnati for a week. They didn't come in at all under Schott.

        “We did something this year that a lot of teams don't,” Rodgers said. “We had our cross checkers cross over to another region and check players in that region. We feel like the more eyes you put on a player the better.”

        Such expense under Schott would have been unheard of. Even if the money was there, the Reds couldn't have done it.

        “We didn't have cross checkers,” Bowden said. “We had one scouting director doing the whole country.”

        The added personnel and budget is starting to pay off.

        “The last couple of drafts, we've done well,” Rodgers said. “If not for injuries, Brandon Larson would be at Triple-A knocking on the door to the big leagues. Austin Kearns has made an outstanding adjustment to the outfield after playing infield in high school. He's got one of the best arms in the Midwest League.”

        Larson was the top pick in 1997. Kearns was the top pick in 1998. The Reds are also high on last year's pick, Ty Howington.

        While the top picks are often the gauge by which drafts are measured, it's what you do after Round 1 that often makes a draft. The 1997 draft, for example, will be considered outstanding even if Larson never plays an inning in the big leagues.

        That's because the Reds picked Gookie Dawkins in the second round and Scott Williamson in the ninth round. Mike Frank, who played with the Reds in 1998, was the seventh-round pick in the 1997 draft.

        The Reds got Adam Dunn in the second round in 1998. He was available only because he was going to play football at the University of Texas, but has since quit football to concentrate on baseball. Baseball America rated his pick as “The Most Astute” of the 1998 draft.

        “You want to have a good overall draft,” said Johnny Almaraz, a cross checker for the Reds. “You want to get good guys early and late. Cincinnati has always put an emphasis on that. So much goes into rounds one through five. But I tell my guys "There are still 45 rounds to go.'”

        And you can find a gem late in the draft: Mike Piazza was a 62nd-round draft pick.

        There's the intangibles again.

        “I've played with a lot of guys who had enough ability to play here,” McKeon said. “But it takes more than that.”

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