A group of scouts descended on the Twin Cities from out of town and members from across the organization — the scouting department, player development staff, research and development team and more — came together this week to kick draft preparation into a higher gear.

On Sunday, the Twins will add the next wave of talent to the organization when the draft begins, making their first selection at No. 16 overall with another pick coming at No. 36 overall, a Competitive Balance Round A selection.

Unlike some drafts, there seems to be no consensus at the top of the draft, which opens up the door for any number of scenarios for the Twins with their pick midway through the first round.

“We’re always going into the draft ready for things to not go the way we think they will or even (according to) the Plan B that we come up with,” assistant general manager Sean Johnson, who oversees the draft, said. “I think that will be the case again this year, just because we know inside the top-10, those names are somewhat interchangeable and depending on who takes certain deals and who doesn’t, it may push some players toward us that may get closer to us than we would have imagined.”

That’s what this past week of draft prep was for.

They ran through their board with names falling off randomly, Johnson said, or used a third-party list to go through the players and different situations so that when they’re faced with a certain scenario Sunday, they’ve likely already talked about it.

“That’s something you couldn’t do 25 years ago with a magnetic board,” Johnson said. “We can run about anything we want to now to help us mentally prepare for the real exercise.”

There’s also plenty of room for discussion amongst the room as talent evaluators sift through their lists and the Twins try to set their board.

With the strength of this draft class, Johnson believes the Twins were “right in the sweet spot” of the draft.

“Once we get past the top 10, we feel like there’s really good depth at our first pick and our second pick and maybe not a huge delta between the talent level or upside of those players, so we feel like we’re in a really good spot picking,” Johnson said.

Since Johnson took over the scouting department in 2017, there’s been no true pattern to whom the Twins select in the first round. They’ve drafted high school position players (like Royce Lewis and Walker Jenkins), a couple high school pitchers (since-traded Chase Petty, Charlee Soto) and plenty of college bats (now-Athletics all-star Brent Rooker, Trevor Larnach, Matt Wallner, Brooks Lee and last year’s No. 21 overall pick, Kaelen Culpepper).

Middle and later rounds are often more stacked with college pitchers. Some of those arms — Bailey Ober was a 12th-round pick, David Festa was selected in the 13th round and Zebby Matthews in the 8th — are currently impacting the team.

Recent mock drafts have connected them to Tennessee infielder Gavin Kilen (ESPN), UC Santa Barbara right-handed pitcher Tyler Bremner (MLB.com) and Arizona outfielder Brendan Summerhill (The Athletic).

“We’ve learned that you just can’t predict how these things are going to go … even when they seem straightforward, which this draft is not, more so than most,” Johnson said. “We’ll be ready for how the chips fall and try to stay nimble.”