Have the Bombers gone barren?

Three years ago, their minor league system was ranked among the top 10 in baseball, but this year ESPN.com's Keith Law placed the Yankees' farm system 20th out of 30 teams.

In Law's Top 100 prospects, he included just three Yankees: catcher Gary Sanchez (68), and outfielders Tyler Austin (85) and Mason Williams (87), though none of them have even excelled at Double-A Trenton yet.

All three are so far from the majors the Yankees spent nearly $300 million on free agents Brian McCann, Jacoby Ellsbury and Carlos Beltran this winter.

Over the better part of the past decade, the Yankees' first-round draft choices have not worked out well. While making their first pick either late in the round or not among the first 30 selections at all, excitement has been replaced by disappointment.

Pitcher Ty Hensley, 2012's first pick, needed a hip operation shortly after taking a pro mound. Third baseman Dante Bichette Jr. (51st overall in 2011) hasn't hit, while, in the words of one scout, 2010's choice, shortstop Cito Culver, "can't hit."

Outfielder Slade Heathcott, from the 2009 draft, has trouble staying healthy, but might make it if he stops going to the hospital. Heathcott, 23, has not played above Double-A yet.

"I think he can still be an above-average outfielder," an NL scout said. "We are not at the finish line yet."

With Gerrit Cole, the Yankees' No. 1 pick in 2008, the Bombers never even made it to the starting line. Cole dropped to the Yankees at 28, because no one thought they could sign him.

The Yankees believed otherwise, but were wrong.

After he attended UCLA, the Pittsburgh Pirates selected Cole with the No. 1 overall pick in 2011. He arrived in the majors in 2013, going 10-7 with a 3.22 ERA.

In 2007, the Yankees chose the 6-foot-10 Andrew Brackman with visions of Randy Johnson in their head. The Yankees made the pick, knowing Brackman needed Tommy John surgery.

They paid him $4.55 million and he pitched in three games for the Yankees, none of them meaningful.

In 2013, Brackman, now 28, pitched in Class A ball for the Chicago White Sox organization.

"Good development usually starts with good scouting," said an executive from an AL team.

The Yankees did well in 2004 and 2006, spending first-round picks on Ian Kennedy, Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes in those years.

Despite their success, expectations have made the three seem like disappointments even though one made the playoffs possible in 2007, another was an All-Star in 2010 and a third was fourth in the NL Cy Young voting in 2011. Each has gone backwards as a major leaguer, with Chamberlain and Hughes doing so under the Yankees' watch.

In the 17th round in 2006, they grabbed a skinny kid from Alabama, who is now Rivera's replacement in David Robertson.

With their 2005 first pick, they chose C.J. Henry. Henry spent four seasons in the Yankees' system before returning to college to play basketball, spending some time at Kansas before ending up at South Nazarene University. In 2013, Henry, now 27, played baseball for the Independent League Evansville Otters.

In '05, the Yankees made up for the Henry mistake when Gardner lasted to the third round and Austin Jackson was left in the eighth.

Unlike with Cole, the Yankees convinced Jackson to skip college -- he was going to play hoops at Georgia Tech -- to work his way up the minor league system, where he ultimately was traded in the Curtis Granderson deal.

In 2013, the Yankees' head of amateur scouting, Damon Oppenheimer, drafted three players in the first round. The industry all seem to like the potential of third baseman Eric Jagielo, outfielder Aaron Judge and lefty Ian Clarkin. Jagielo hit well (.266-6-27) in 51 games for the Class A Staten Island Yankees, but neither Judge (quad) nor Clarkin (ankle) has yet been able to play due to injuries.

"The bottom line is, we have high hopes for them just like we have for all our number ones," Cashman said. "Those selections were made very similar to all our picks. Have we made adjustments over time and continued to try to evolve and improve? Always. But the hopes and dreams on Jagielo, Judge and Clark are no different from the ones we had on the guys we've selected in the past. Unfortunately, we just haven't been able to back up, to see the benefits reaped by those guys in those dreams, whether because of injury or failure."

The 2013 Big Three are part of next wave of Yankees hopefuls, along with Sanchez -- whom the Yankees signed out of the Dominican for $3 million in 2009 -- and 2010 draft picks, Williams (fourth round) and Austin (13th). They will develop with the extra attention of being a Yankees prospect.

"The Yankees prospects have so much written about them," said an AL scout who has worked with the Yankees. "If a player is a Brewer, he doesn't get as much attention. The standard becomes so high. So guys like David Phelps, Adam Warren or an Ian Kennedy aren't looked as good. It is either you are the next Derek Jeter or a failure."

THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN'

In December, at the news conference to announce the McCann signing, Hal Steinbrenner said, "We're teaching our scouts to look for different things, things that maybe they hadn't looked for before, things Cashman thinks are important."

Mark Newman, the Yankees' senior vice president of baseball operations since 2000, believes the team already has the second most domestic scouts in baseball after the Toronto Blue Jays and likely the most international ones. Still, the Yankees have added more scouts this winter, plus former MLB manager Trey Hillman for player development.

"I'm not going to go into specifics because some of the stuff, I think, is proprietary," Newman said. "It involves a lot of different decision-making methods and models. One of the things is we increased staff. We are trying to do things to improve injury rates, the way we scout and sign players, the way we coach them."

Newman and Oppenheimer, since 2005 the Yankees' director of amateur scouting whose responsibilities include the draft, remain in their jobs.

"We did what we typically do on a yearly basis," Cashman said. "We go back and try to assess what we've done and what we can do better. We try to determine what is actionable and what is just unfortunate circumstances."

"Actionable" is a euphemism for misjudging a player's tools, incorrectly projecting a player's ceiling, or simply making the wrong pick.

That refers to players like Brackman, the No. 1 pick in 2007, whom the Yankees' evaluators thought comparable to David Price, the overall No. 1 pick that year.

It refers to Henry, the Yankees' No. 1 pick in 2005, who never progressed past Class A ball.

Someday, it might refer to Culver, the No. 1 pick in 2010. Culver is the one pick officials from other teams questioned at the time the Yankees made the selection. His weakness at the plate has kept him in Class A ball for the past three seasons.

"Unfortunate circumstances" means injuries.

That refers to players like Hensley, the No. 1 in 2012 who was discovered after five rookie league starts to need the same kind of hip surgery Alex Rodriguez had to have after 16 seasons.