For Jeff at least. We won't know if it pays off for the Cubs for several years. That's a ton of scratch, and reportedly a NTC as well, which takes away a huge amount of any prospects value. They're able to take a 1st round projection who at the time was considered a more likely bet for FB rather than BB and select him in the 5th round and able to sign him while getting starts at SS and low-A, that's a success, IMO. Not many teams would've done the work or used the resources to find out what his intentions truly were and then to actually take that chance is something that doesn't happen that often. It's similar to when teams draft a player lower than he is slotted and while signing him higher than the slotted pick (Eric Patterson or Hellickson from TB come to mind), is able to prevent him from going to school or going back to school. In this case, it involves not only school and cont. to play BB, but obviously FB as well. Even if Patterson doesn't pan out, the inital aspect of being able to draft and more imp. sign someone with that ceiling is a success. Yes, they were successful signing him, throwing unprecedented money around helps. But we won't know if it pays off for quite a while. Just getting a guy signed is worthless if he turns into nothing and can't be traded for anything of value.