Most of the focus from the baseball world is on the major league club. However, in the front office most of the focus is now on three other areas: the free agent draft June 7-9; the 2007 major league free agent class and the July 31 trade deadline.

This is a critical draft for the Nationals as we have five of the top 71 picks, including the sixth overall. Three of those selections result from free agent compensation acquired after Alfonso Soriano signed with the Cubs and Jose Guillen signed with the Mariners.

This year’s draft is headlined by some high-profile pitchers like North Carolina State’s Andrew Brackman, Vanderbilt’s David Price, Missouri State’s Ross Detwiler and Rice’s Joe Savery. It is also a good year for high school position players and pitchers. It appears to be a deep draft.

Our organization will be built on player development and scouting, but that doesn’t mean we won’t pursue or sign free agents in the future. As long as the major league payroll has flexibility, we might decide the best way to spend a portion of our payroll is on free agents. Therefore, we need to make sure we do our homework on all free agents throughout the year. With the type of dollars and length of contracts needed to sign free agents, we have to make sure we have been diligent, with several different evaluators viewing the players on a regular basis.

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This year’s free agent class includes impact starting pitchers such as the Cubs’ Carlos Zambrano, the White Sox’s Mark Buerhle, Philadelphia’s Freddy Garcia, Houston’s Jason Jennings and Cleveland’s Jake Westbrook. Position players include Atlanta’s Andruw Jones and Seattle’s Ichiro Suzuki. Why scout players of that magnitude? Simple: players change on a regular basis. You have to be aware if their skills are diminishing, if his body is improving, if he has personal problems, if he is maturing mentally. The more opinions you have from your top evaluators, the better decision — and wiser investment — you can make.

Although the trade deadline is four months away, we must start preparing now. We target clubs we think will contend and we commence scouting their top prospects in April and will continue through the deadline. We focus on starting pitching prospects as well as all of their top young players. We are blessed with a deep staff and because of that we have professional scouts whose only responsibility is covering the minor and major leagues. We have added several top pitching evaluators, including former major league pitchers Bill Singer and Bart Johnson. When you are rebuilding, you must consider all trade proposals. You’re always looking for the deal where you trade one established player for three young players.

As told to The Examiner’s John Keim.

Nationals General Manager Jim Bowden provides an exclusive column to The Examiner each week, ranging on topics from the Nats to the state of Major League Baseball.