rookie owner question:  what amount of money do I need to spend to see good international prospects?  My budget is $14 mil and every prospects is complete garbage so far.  

I'm beginning to think spending any money at all at INT scouting is a waste of money.  For the money spend in scouting and the big league contracts they are looking for, I might as well take my chances in free agency.

what do you guys think?

That's a question of strategy.  There is no one way to run your franchise.  With $14 mil budgeted, you should see some good IFAs, but the real question is how much prospect money do you have available to go after an IFA or IFAs?  If you have anything less than 20 million after what you (would) spend to sign your draftees, you'll most likely get outbid for the best IFAs.  You can either try to sign a few medium level ones, or save it all to try and be a top bidder for a good one.  There are many variables, including how much prospect money and IFA budgeting that the rest of the franchises have in your world.

At $14M you see more prospects, so you are bound to see a bunch of crap. But the odds are you are also going to see more of the top prospects.

As far as it being a waste, it can be. If you're spending $14M plus $20M for a prospect, it could be better to spend that $34M on FA. But if you're not getting any Internationals, you are going to have to rely solely on the draft to build your franchise. So you'll probably need to spend more in those areas.

And at the same time, you control the international for essentially 7+ seasons, most of which will be under cost. The first four years are at league minimum, so if the player would be worth $8M in Free Agency, you're actually not spending any more money than you would be on a Free Agent.

It's a money management game as much as anything else, and you just have to find what balance works best for you within your league.

  There seems to be an elite prospect right at the end of every season, after the other teams have spent their entire budget on IFA's.  So if you've got 10-15 mil left... that could snag a hell of a player. 

You can go thru a season seeing hardly any top IFAs or quite a few. Every season is different. If you budget $20M for prospects, you'll need about $5M for your amateur draftees. That will leave about $15M for IFAs. I like to get one really good IFA each season if possible. $15M should net you a good one. Don't worry about when in the season you bid, early or late. If he's a good enough prospect, go after him with everything. Last year I waited and let a few guys go by and no one very good showed up for the rest of the year. I ended up signing a bunch of mediocre to bad IFAs at the end of the season just to stock my MiL and still ended up with a lot of wasted money. So, if you see a top prospect, don't hold back. With $14M budgeted for IFA scouting, you should see most of the good ones.