If you’re hunting for evidence that George Steinbrenner is no longer the all-commanding voice of Yankees affairs that he was in the past, look no further than the truckload of money they spent on draftees prior to Wednesday’s deadline for signing 2007 draft picks.

For all the money that the Boss has been willing to throw at free agents ranging in quality from Eddie Whitson to Reggie Jackson, he never believed in speculating in young players. He never accepted that if the Yankees threw their financial might around with amateurs — the way they did with mediocre veterans — they could defeat the purpose of the draft, which was to distribute the best young talent to the teams most in need of it, rather than the wealthiest, and obviate the very need for those free agents. It does not necessarily follow that the Yankees have often had the highest payroll in baseball because their great revenues allow them to sustain it. Rather, their payrolls have climbed because if they wanted to keep winning, they had no choice but to overpay to make up for Steinbrenner’s lack of interest in growing his own talent.

Not only would Steinbrenner not commit the funds, he refused to hold his many minor league consiglieres to the same standard of hyper-accountability that he applied to his managers, general managers, and coaches. Year after year, the Yankees would throw their draft picks away on players who would never develop enough to threaten the job security of even an Ed Whitson or a Dave Collins. The Yankees scouted poorly and they trained poorly. Even when they didn’t give away picks to the free agent compensation system, they couldn’t capitalize. The wealthiest team in sports had trouble squeezing even decent middle relievers out of their farm system.

But if the Yankees had simply spent on amateurs the way they did on utility infielders, they would have recovered from the malaise of the 1980s and early 1990s — or from their recent World Series drought — much faster. All they had to do is what they had done in the years before the draft: Pay high bonuses. This would have inflated the value of the best prospects, forcing teams with less financial flexibility to choose lesser talents, and pushing the better players down in the draft where the Yankees were waiting. Alternatively, if the Yankees were willing to gamble on high school talent, they could take players who were thought to be committed to college, and bribe them into signing. Finally, they could take outright risks, as they did last year with Joba Chamberlain and this year with first-round pick Andrew Brackman, and gamble that a highly talented but possibly damaged player could be salvaged.

As the Chamberlain signing indicates, the Yankees had finally begun moving in this direction in recent years. Carl Pavano and pals were an expensive wake-up call that coincided with Steinbrenner’s apparent withdrawal. But ironically, they chose to fully commit to conquering the amateur draft in the year that MLB waged a fierce campaign to roll back draft compensation.

In order to control the explosive growth of signing bonuses, and inhibit teams like the Yankees from breaking the draft, MLB has created a non-compulsory slotting system. The commissioner’s office issues a series of bonus recommendations for each draft position. For example, a third-round pick is supposed to be worth about $350,000, depending where in the round the player was taken. A fifth-round pick is supposed to bring in less than $200,000.

Because the system is voluntary, violating it means notifying the commissioner’s office of your intention, getting yelled at, and being asked to reconsider. Teams that don’t reconsider get yelled at again, and perhaps there are some tears as well. “If you really loved me you wouldn’t act this way,” one imagines the Lackey in Charge of Slot Enforcement saying. “Don’t you care about my feelings?”

The Yankees undoubtedly dealt with a lot of this kind of wheedling on Wednesday, if there was even time — baseball’s newly installed deadline led to a flurry of last-minute signings. They signed all of their first 15 picks, and 22 of their first 25, repeatedly paying above slot. Fourth-round pick Brad Suttles, a third baseman, was a draft-eligible sophomore, meaning that he had the leverage of going back to college. The Yankees gave him a round-record $1.3 million to leave school. Their tenth-round pick, high school shortstop Carmen Angelini, is not regarded as a “can’t miss” future star, but the Yankees gave him $1 million to turn pro. Why? Because they can afford to cast a wide net. As one major league scouting director told Baseball Prospectus’s Kevin Goldstein, “Be sure of one thing: That’s not scouting, that’s just money.”

The greatest largesse was reserved for first-round pick Brackman, a right-handed pitcher who may not be healthy enough to pitch for a year. Brackman supposedly has great stuff, but he’s rarely shown it on the field. He split time in college between basketball and baseball, and took an apparent injury time-out this spring. It seems likely that his elbow will be rebuilt before the Yankees even see what he looks like in a uniform. As complete an unknown as one could find, Brackman received a $3.35 million bonus, additional guarantees bringing the value of the contract up to $4.55 million. The pitcher also received a series of easily-achievable elevator clauses that could bring his overall haul up to $15 million. As another scouting director told Goldstein, “A guy who’s never pitched a full season of baseball, a guy who probably needs [Tommy John surgery], a guy with no options to return to school … When a guy like that gets that kind of money, you tell me how the system isn’t broken.”

No mystery there: The draft isn’t doing what it was mean to do. It is not making prospects more affordable, and it’s not keeping the best players out of the hands of the Yankees. The only mysteries are what took the Yankees so long to wake up to their own power, and if the owner’s position has finally changed — or that he simply lacked the voice to stop the team from doing what needed to be done.

Mr. Goldman writes the Pinstriped Bible for yesnetwork.com and is the author of “Forging Genius,” a biography of Casey Stengel.