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I guess to me recommending that someone “do it the way the Rays have done it” is about as easy as “do it the way the Yankees do it.”  The Yankees outspend everyone, the Rays out-prospect everyone.
Which they can do because they kept trading their good talent for more picks, only recently ponying up the cash to keep some of it.
Between 1998 and 2007 they never finished with more than 70 wins and 5 times had 99 or more losses.  That’s a solid decade to rack up some draftpicks, especially since they traded any of them when they got expensive.  Trading Crawford and Kazmir…if we want to trade Pineda and Ackley in a few years  then we, too, can recoup a ton of assets.
They changed the rules on compensation picks partly because the Rays were building an army of prospects (smartly) that way.
But the Royals and the Pirates have been trying to do it “the Rays way” for many years now, to terrible effect.  If the young arms of the Rays had all blown out the way the young arms of the Pirates did, we wouldn’t be talking about a Rays Way to do things.  There’s as much luck involved in relying on the farm as there is in paying for free agents.  The good thing about the farm is that if a farmhand fails its very cheap to replace them.
The bad thing is that there’s a finite number of great prospects in a system at any one time, and you may not reach critical mass with the ones you’ve got before you start losing them prior to the next wave being ready to contribute at a high level.
On the one hand, you’ve scoffed at those who believe a farmhand needs to come up and contribute immediately or he’s a failure.  OTOH, forcing the farm to produce all your WAR means that you can’t afford to wait around forever for them to have breakthroughs, because most of those breakthroughs need to happen at the same time to achieve critical mass.
Sure, maybe Vinne Catricala is the next Jose Bautista – but it took Bautista 6 years to become a monster.  We don’t have 6 years.  I don’t think it’s a crime to want to compete now, and if Ackley has more than a little Edgar in him then getting him some help BEFORE we “almost” do something would be nice.
“Hey, now that we’ve won 90 we can start spending” also means “hey, now that we’ve flushed one shot at 95 wins and a world series…”
Gotta figure out how close your roster is to some sort of success and how big a window you’re planning on.  Fielder is not just here for 2012, he's here for 2012-2019.  Maybe you don't want him here in 2019, but I sure do want him here before that to help lengthen and broaden that window.
Like you said, though, opinions vary.
~G