Callis: Yanks’ farm now arguably MLB’s best

Despite spending $901.6 million on big league payroll from 2012-15, more than any club except for the Dodgers and nearly double what the average team paid, the Yankees have a grand total of two postseason appearances and zero playoff victories to show for it. New York’s Opening Day payroll of $227.9 million this year again trailed only Los Angeles, but has translated into just the fourth-best record in the American League East and the ninth-best overall in the Junior Circuit.

The Yankees have learned the hard way that their financial might alone can’t carry them to October glory. With one of the oldest teams in baseball, their 2017 and 2018 outlooks didn’t seem any brighter. So they’ve changed course this summer, trading coveted relievers for blue-chip prospects as they look more toward the future and present.

After shipping Aroldis Chapman to the Cubs for Adam Warren and three prospects, including shortstop Gleyber Torres (No. 26 on MLBPipeline.com’s Top 100 Prospects list), and then spinning Andrew Miller to the Indians for a four-prospect package headed by outfielder Clint Frazier (No. 24) and left-hander Justus Sheffield (No. 95), the Yankees have arguably the best and deepest farm system in the game. (We’ll update our system rankings after the Trade Deadline arrives on Monday.)

“I think our system that currently is now in play is starting to mirror what that system started to produce which propelled us into the ’90s,” Yankees GM Brian Cashman said Sunday in a conference call following the Miller deal. “We’re trying to get back to a situation where we can build an uberteam, and a sustainable one. We’ll see where it takes us, but that’s the effort that we’ve got going on and I think fans should be excited by that.”

Since Cashman first joined the Yankees as an intern in 1986, their farm system has never been …

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