This isn’t the first time Theo Epstein tried to land David DeJesus.

As Boston’s gen­eral man­ager, Epstein attempted to pick up DeJe­sus from the Roy­als both before the 2010 trade dead­line and again after the sea­son. Epstein missed out both times, though, and DeJe­sus was instead dealt to Oak­land, where he turned in his most dis­ap­point­ing sea­son to date as the A’s pri­mary right fielder.

Of course, Epstein didn’t let that series of events get him down. In fact, he took advan­tage, sign­ing DeJe­sus to a two-year, $ 10 mil­lion con­tract in his new role as Cubs GM. It’s a rel­a­tive pit­tance com­pared to what DeJe­sus would have received had he instead been a free agent last winter.

And DeJe­sus doesn’t really seem like much worse of a bet now than he was then. He’s a year older, but at 32, he still qual­i­fies as some­thing of a spring chicken in the Cubs out­field. He should be the best of that bunch, too. DeJe­sus has a 107 OPS+ over the last three sea­son, com­pared to 103 for Mar­lon Byrd and 101 for Alfonso Soriano.

The DeJe­sus sign­ing does put a tem­po­rary road­block in front of the Cubs’ top prospect, Brett Jack­son, but it was already clear that the team doesn’t think he’s quite ready just yet. If Jack­son starts demol­ish­ing Triple-A pitch­ing, then Byrd could well be moved in June or July. Alter­na­tively, the Cubs can just go ahead and bench or even release Sori­ano if he doesn’t per­form bet­ter this year.

DeJe­sus isn’t the dif­fer­ence maker that Cubs fans are hop­ing for, but he should have been val­ued as an $ 8 million-per-year player and Epstein just bagged him for $ 5 mil­lion. Con­sid­er­ing that Cubs are prob­a­bly more than a Pujols away from win­ning the NL Cen­tral any­way, it’s exactly the kind of move Epstein was smart to start his tenure with.