This link is to an espn.com story about the Yankees’ failure to make the playoffs for the first time since 1995.

The gist of the story is that the Yankees have had a horrible minor-league system for years, and it finally caught up with them.

At the end of the story is a very interesting chart, demonstrating how much major-league time guys originally drafted/signed by each of the big-league teams got, during that 1196-2008 span.

The Yankees are down at the bottom, of course. That’s the point of the story.

But right down there, keeping the Yankees company at the bottom … are the Dodgers.

And for many of the same reasons — wanting to win now, forfeiting high picks when signing free agents and just not paying all that much attention to player development.

Check out the chart.

Only seven organizations have had their position-player products play fewer big-league games than the Dodgers.

And only the Yankees have had homegrown pitchers threw fewer innings than the Dodgers’ drafted/signed pitchers, over the same span, and it’s really close: Dodgers pitchers have 1,867 innings to the Yankees’ 1,852, and the Dodgers just moved ahead thanks to Chad Bullingsley and Clayton Kershaw, both in their current starting rotation, and Jonathan Broxton, the reliever who gets a lot of innings.

Anyway, the Dodgers’ success with young talent has been almost as empty as has the Yankees. Though, we must concede, a little flurry of guys here, of late, indicates the Dodgers are ahead of the Yankees in terms of fixing theirplayer-development problems.

And the Angels?

No. 12 in games played by position players …14th in innings pitched by their homegrown pitchers.  Middle of the pack, basically, which isn’t a bad place to be when you are willing to sign at least a few free agents, as the Angels are.