On July 11, the Boston Red Sox were on the clock with the 20th pick in the first round of the 2026 MLB Draft. Jake Bruml PO ’15, Boston’s director of amateur scouting, already knew the name he was about to call, and how that call would look to many watching at home.
To most draft analysts, the former University of North Carolina shortstop Jake Schaffner was not a first round pick. Baseball America and MLB.com both had Schaffner outside the top 75 overall, and Bruml himself admitted that the pick might raise some eyebrows. Yet, Bruml saw in Schaffner what many missed: the skills that could make him the future shortstop of the Boston Red Sox, and the opportunity to save money for future picks.
“I wouldn’t have come up and said it was an off-the-wall pick if it wasn’t actually the case,” Bruml said. “But trusting our group, what we [the scouting department] saw, how we valued him, and then executing at a high level, we were able to get a player we were really excited about and bank all those savings.”
This year’s draft was the first that Bruml oversaw as Boston’s director of amateur scouting. Bruml and his staff meticulously scouted, ranked and reranked prospects from over 790 players on their draft board in preparation for draft night.
For Bruml, making a bold call with conviction was nothing new. Just seven years earlier, he had walked away from a promising research position at Aduro BioTech to become an intern with the Red Sox, a journey that started on the baseball diamond at Pomona College.
During his four years at Pomona as a two-way baseball player, Bruml finished his career with over 200 hits and 20 pitching wins.
“My time playing was arguably the best part of my experience at Pomona,” Bruml said. “Some of my best friends out of school now, or since graduating, were my former teammates, and the relationships that I built there, being as part of the team, were incredibly memorable and impactful.”
““My time playing was arguably the best part of my experience at Pomona,” Bruml said. “Some of my best friends out of school now, or since graduating, were my former teammates, and the relationships that I built there, being as part of the team, were incredibly memorable and impactful.” ”
Bruml’s days often started in the chemistry lab and ended on the field. As a chemistry major, he balanced his time as an athlete with his passion for science.
“I’ve loved science [and] math for as long as I can remember,” Bruml said. “I wrote some of my college essays about the movie ‘[An] Inconvenient Truth’about global warming and climate change … I got an A in first semester chemistry, and I think I got like a B or B-plus in biology. So I was like, ‘all right, let’s just go with the one I’m better at.’”
Through his junior year, Bruml still had his sights set on his dream of playing professional baseball. Then, his spot to play in the Cape Cod Baseball League fell through in the summer after a coaching change. Bruml was forced to adjust his career plans, pivoting to a future in chemistry.
“There was a little emotional letdown of knowing that I wasn’t gonna spend a summer in Cape Cod and in actually having to try and be a functioning adult and member of society, but once I got in the lab, I really did enjoy it,” Bruml said.
Following graduation, Bruml returned to Aduro, set to pursue a career in chemistry. Yet, he quickly hit a ceiling. Bruml realized that he needed a graduate degree to advance in the company, which he was hesitant to commit to. Shifting gears to look towards business, Bruml began to study for the GMAT until his father, pointing to two fellow Sagehens already in the industry, nudged him toward a different path: baseball.
“My dad encouraged me, knowing that baseball is one of my major passions and something I truly love to pursue,” Bruml said. “The reason he encouraged me to do that was because he saw Guy Stevens [PO ’13], who was a couple years older than me, and then Simon Rosenbaum [PO ’16], who I lived with and was a year younger than me … They’re being successful, and enjoying it. ‘Why couldn’t that be you?’”
Bruml took the leap of faith, ultimately landing an internship with the scouting department of the Boston Red Sox in 2019, fresh off of their championship season. There, he learned from Paul Toboni and Devin Pearson, the former director and assistant director of amateur scouting, and secured a full time position with the team in 2020. Under their tenure, the team rebuilt their farm system to one of the best in the league just five years later.
“I loved working for [Devin Pearson] and Paul [Toboni],” Bruml said. “I learned so much about what it means to [be] like who they are as people. It was so impactful, and what they did to empower those around them and to create buy-in and a culture of trust.”
In 2025, following Pearson and Toboni’s departure to the Washington Nationals, Bruml was named the new director of amateur scouting, assuming control of the department that he interned for just seven years prior. Leading the draft for the first time this past summer, Bruml’s confidence and willingness to embrace risk have propelled him to a meteoric rise in the industry. Bruml attributes his success to his unconventional path to professional baseball.
“The path that I took has definitely set me up for success,” Bruml said. “Having industry experience, forcing me to problem solve, but also understanding what it’s like to work in an office with culture, and then slowly working my way up through a baseball front office, and needing to work for everything, definitely makes a difference.”
Today, Bruml is still using the skills he learned on Pomona-Pitzer’s diamond to help in his scouting, leading the Red Sox in this year’s draft, and beyond.
“As baseball players, we’ve been scouting our whole lives when we just didn’t realize it,” Bruml said. “We know when we show up to the field player X is really good for [California Lutheran University] and player Y for [Claremont-Mudd-Scripps] is the hitter you have to be aware of. It’s something I say to a lot of young aspiring scouts as well. Especially if you have a playing background, you’ve been scouting your whole lives.”
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