King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Deadline-day trades: Which non-blockbuster will seem a whole lot more important in a few years than it does now?

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Aug. 1, 2007 | If you play in a deep enough fantasy league, you know the moves that win championships aren't necessarily the ones that put the superstars on your roster. More often, they're the ones that fill the holes.

There are various superstars out there, everybody pretty much knows who they are, and everybody knows you usually have to have at least one or two of them to have a real crack at winning it all. Getting a superstar is like getting a really nice car. There's no trick to it. You just need enough money.

But once you've done that -- the superstar thing, not the car thing -- the real craft is filling out the rest of the roster, finding solid players to play the positions your superstars don't and getting them at the right price so you can keep them happy, keep the superstars happy and pay the electric bill.

When you get down to those last few spots, those fifth outfielders and middle relievers, you're really talking about art, because who the hell are these guys? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Alex Rodriguez is a really good ballplayer, though it does seem to take someone smarter than the average Yankees fan or New York writer.

But trying to figure out which of three 21-year-old pitchers at Double-A are going to make it, or whether that lefty relief specialist is worth that backup catcher, that's really something. It's an art good general managers have to be good at, because the difference between any two teams' best players isn't as great as the difference between their worst players.

Someone's going to study that last point and prove me wrong. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Meanwhile, I'm sticking to my theory, on the theory that you've got to have theories, and the theory (stop saying theory) is that superstars give you a chance to win the championship, but it's the scrubs who actually win it for you.

All this is a big part of what makes the trading deadline, which passed Tuesday afternoon, so fascinating for baseball wonks. Sure, Mark Teixeira to Atlanta and Eric Gagne to Boston get the headlines, and those deals may win a pennant for the Braves and Red Sox. But it's just as likely, maybe more likely, that one of the smaller deals that has gone down in the past few days will have a bigger impact.

Next page: Who steals that base if Dave Roberts doesn't get traded to Boston?