Farming.

An ongoing group discussion being had about Brewer/Twin/Yankee structure, statistics, strategic choices and goals reached a new level when the Yankee farm system was brought into play. Farming, is something that those in the Midwest know a thing about. It takes time, patience and trust that other farmers will not sabotage your crops.
However, there is that one farmer who has the funds available to him so as to bypass the whole growing/raising part and skip straight to the buying of other peoples crops and when they choose they sell their crops to others for different crops which are supposedly the best or the best new thing. This mentality of solely focusing your survival on the purchasing of cash crops (aka Yankee ownership purchasing the talent that other teams have raised) isn't limited to the farm system of these people. However, an argument isn't worth winning if it cannot be challenged, so the below article from the NY times is interesting......

www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/sports/baseball/09pitchers.html

Segments from participants in the discussion are below:

This is a really weird article. They've actually identified something true: that the Yankees have to some degree smartened up and realized that some of the money they spend on washed up veterans could be more wisely invested in over-slot payments for draft picks making outrageous demands.
But that practice is a)equally irritating to anybody who criticizes the Yankees for trying to spend their way to success and b)so far missing evidence of any actual success.
Kennedy, Chamberlain and, to a lesser degree, Phil Hughes all fell into the Yankees' hands because of their bonus demands, not because the Yankees employ a bunch of scouts to saavily unearth great sleeper prospects. They did it this year with Andrew Brackmann, too.
The problem is that they haven't produced a quality starter from draft through development since Andy Petite, and that was more than a decade ago. Phil Hughes looks excellent and he's likely to break that string of futility, but until he actually does so and shows more than MLB potential, it's worth questioning whether the Yankees actually have the patience and ability to do the job anymore.
Anyhow. All this really means is that the Yankees are outspending people in a more intelligent way than they did five years ago.