The Nationals' failure to sign Aaron Crow is yet another strike against the regime of embattled general manager Jim Bowden, whose name has popped up in the investigation into embezzlement of signing bonuses in Latin America. In full-on spin mode, Bowden now is claiming that Crow and his advisors didn't give the Nationals any indication before the draft what it might take for Crow to sign (even though this information was common knowledge in the industry) and didn't provide a dollar figure until Aug. 12. If the Nationals genuinely didn't know what Crow wanted, it was either willful ignorance or the worst case of a signability analysis I've ever seen. And if they weren't willing to go much over slot, they could have just taken Arizona State's Brett Wallace (taken by the Cardinals at No. 13) or Long Beach (Calif.) high school hitter Aaron Hicks (taken by the Twins at No. 14), signed either for slot at No. 9 and made the plausible argument that they took the best player available.The Nationals didn't do anything later in their draft to salvage this misstep. They gave back-of-the-first-round money to outfielder J.P. Ramirez (selected in the 15th round, 451st overall), who didn't make my top 75 prospects for the draft and ranked No. 155 on Baseball America's list (roughly a fourth/fifth rounder). They signed just two prospects off my top 75, none higher than catcher Adrian Nieto at No. 40, and nobody in Baseball America's top 50. It's not a Houston 2007 disaster -- where the Astros didn't have picks in the first and second rounds, then failed to sign their third- and fourth-rounders -- but it's a significant problem for a team whose farm system was gutted under years of MLB-state ownership. The Nationals now will have two picks in the top 10 next year, an extremely expensive proposition, and in a draft class that is no stronger than this one. (In fact, a rough cut at the top 10 prospects for next year's draft would include at least five that I expect will be advised by Scott Boras: Stephen Strasburg, Grant Green, Dustin Ackley, Andy Oliver and Donovan Tate.) It's a bad outcome for a franchise that needed another good draft to continue the farm system's comeback, which has already had unforeseen setbacks this year with the struggles of their top two picks from 2007, Ross Detwiler and Josh Smoker.The Yankees' deadline-day strikeout was a little more complicated. Picking 28th, they took the player I ranked 10th in the draft, Gerrit Cole, a high school pitcher from Southern California who fell because of bonus demands and vague questions about his makeup. The Yankees were, by all accounts, willing to pay well over slot to sign Cole, but at the last minute, the player and his father decided they preferred college over pro baseball and negotiations ground to a halt. Cole, who has an electric arm with somewhat rough delivery, will now busy himself throwing 120-plus pitches as a starter for UCLA, which ran junior Tim Murphy out for an unconscionable 144 pitches on May 23 against Cal. Most of the best players left on the board for the Yankees were also high-dollar figure guys; had they chosen a more signable player, they would have been looking at 4th/5th starter candidates, relievers or fringe-average bats.The Yankees also failed to sign their third pick, second-rounder Scott Bittle, although part of the problem was the state of Bittle's shoulder. Given Bittle's overreliance on a cutter/slider (he barely uses his fastball) it's significantly less of a hit than the loss of Cole, who would have been one of the Yankees' top three or four prospects. The Yanks leave the 2008 draft with none of my top 75 prospects from the draft; in a year in which the Red Sox nabbed two first-round talents, including the allegedly unsignable Ryan Westmoreland, and the Rays and the Orioles both had strong drafts on the first day, it does set the Bombers back relative to the stiff competition in the AL East.