I'm not entirely sure how the scouting mechanic works. I see that you can scout by region, but how does it work to scout individual players?

Prior to the draft you will get to workout a number of players and get a better feeling for them. The scouting region function will give you emails from time to time - when you get one of these you will want to take note of the player referenced as your scouting staff might have uncovered something useful that other teams will not know about the player. All the players are scouted at a basic level automatically but this is sort of "bonus information" on players

Thanks for the follow-up. Just to make sure I understand correctly, to scout upcoming players for the draft you can only do that before the draft? Is there a limit to how many players you can workout?