I've never quite understood why it's staggered like this, except for the fact that amateur baseball I guess takes place in both the fall and spring as well. Maybe also in theory because the MLB season goes so late, so the timing of having a draft during the winter meetings or something like that would not be doable, but I'm not sure. I suspect it could have to do ultimately with how the college season is structured. It's definitely a kind of strange, staggered timeline.
One thing that's a minor bummer is that this is our year to have a comp round B pick rather than comp round A. This could end up meaning that Detroit will have a slightly higher bonus pool, since they will be in A. It's also somewhat of a bummer that next year's draft will again be very short, since it would be useful to potentially spread the bonus pool over several rounds.
No sense in speculating too much this far out, since you have to go BPA, but I wouldn't mind a somewhat college-heavy focus this year. I think at the level of overall strategy, we need to start focusing on how to "condense" our window as quickly as possible with Hayes on the scene now. Being able to get a college pitcher at 1.1 contributes to this line of thinking, and of course in a general way, we need to continue building up a system, but adding a couple other shorter-to-MLB college boosts would be nice. Of course, Hayes was a prep pick in a supplemental round, so if the right talent is there, you have to go that route. There's always a balance but it seems like certain teams (I'm thinking of the Cardinals especially) are able to crank out extra cogs that give them a boost every year by tapping into college talent.
