Wow. This is incredibly illuminating. Thanks for digging this up, jorgenswest. The scouting quality and the overall environment in 2014 is probably vastly superior compared to 2006/7, but still, it would be hard to contend that signing the most highly-rated prospects today is that much more predictable. It appears the answer to your first question is that it's probably still pretty much a crap shoot. The second question is impossible to answer: will the Yankees get rewarded? Even if they turn out a Teheran for roughly $14M? A lot of that might depend on if they end up suffering the consequences for cheating, i.e. no signings over $300k the following year, but then again they can still find the Arcias, Santanas, and Pintos, right? Some have criticized the Twins for not signing more of these more highly-ranked prospects, and I'd say this data suggests that the criticism is unfounded, for two reasons. First, they DO sign a number of prospects that others rank highly, such as Sano, Minier, Diaz, Barrie, Silva and Ynoa in the last two years. They sign prospects they like regardless of these dicey outside rankings. Secondly, the many success stories bubbling up support their process: Arcia, Santana, Polanco, Pinto, Sano, Vargas, Thorpe... And the Twins should NOT do the same thing, even if it would clearly work, because it cheats others and it's wrong by every ethical standard one can cite.