I'm not trying to whitewash Avila, FWIW, he was an awful GM.... but a lot of the dialog surrounding his tenure (and how he was the worst) really whitewashes Randy Smith and just how aimless and hopeless the franchise was at that time. And yeah, I think it was worse then than now.
And certainly, IDK if Tork, Greene, the pitchers and some of the other hangers on (such as Meadows or Lipcius or Wenceel Perez) ever reach their true potential, but the odds are a higher for these guys than some of the garbage that Smith and company brought in.
Some of that might be differences in scouting over time, obviously the industry uses more data than it did in the late 90s/early 2000s, but that's just what I see looking at it.