Yeah, they may have changed after '03, but that was still a decade of Cubs prospects under Andy/Hendry leadership without a single position player. That being said, there's nothing wrong with shift to winning for the short-term at times, trading away some guys. The problem is if you have 10 years to build, you should have a better core already around that taking a year off shouldn't kill you. If they did the original play properly, the 00-03 teams should have been filled with multiple good young players from within the organization, and it should have been the perfect time to top it off with a trade for a guy or two at a position you couldn't fill internally. The Lynch years were separate though as was the philosophy. You can't build for the long-term by trading two of the best pitching prospects within your system for Karchner and Heredia (Heredia was young, though) and going after Tapani, Gaetti, Servais, Girardi, etc. I believe the 1st real commitment was after they saw what they potentially could have come up the pipeline for cheap w/Wood. The 98' draft was probably the foundation of positional prospects (Wood, Kelton, and I can't remember if Goldbach was a '98 draftee as well).