To rebuild successfully, you have to be willing to lose now and lose big. You have to acquire two kinds of players: short-term and long-term. Short termers are place fillers, the worse the better. They're there to hold the fort while you wait for your prospects to develop. They need to be good enough to be regulars (though Scoresheet allows less), but not so good that they hurt your draft position. You want your on-field team to lose while your farm system rebuilds, less for the dollars anymore than for the slot in the draft, even if everything past the first round is a crapshoot.
To rebuild well, you have to acquire more picks early. These are vital, especially in a league climate where the knowledge is more evenly distributed. Acquire extra first- and second-round picks and you can restock a system with high ceiling talent.
Without high ceiling talent, you stand no chance. Yes, the pools aren't as good as they once were. Yes, you need bodies in positions. But you must abide by the mantra of the best player available, whatever your needs, regardless of the level where the player is. Your needs can change, and you can trade a rising star at a position where you have abundance better than you can pass on a journeyman at any position. Drafting high ceiling players means acquiring lots of players who turn out to be bums, and the ratio will always be more bums than stars. But unless you acquire stars, you can't win. And you can seldom acquire stars without taking chances, without drafting them before they've established their legitimacy at AA or AAA.
Shun A-ball pitchers. Despite the annual hype, they are too uncertain. Better to acquire pitchers at AAA or above. They are still chancy, and you have to pay for them. But you improve your odds that some will come through and at least pitch in the majors, even if only 1 in 10 becomes any good.
Rebuilding takes literally years. Moline finished dead last in its division in consecutive years (1993-1994). And rebuilding still takes oodles of luck, especially when you draft A-ball and rookie-ball prospects. Sometimes they become Andruw Jones. Sometimes they become Ruben Rivera. Mostly, they become Brett Caradona. That's what makes rebuilding a matter of patient sorting and steady annual humiliation.