Midseason trading deadline: baseball’s Rubicon

Torii Hunter is an aspiring general manager, and he’s had several lengthy conversations with Tony Reagins in the last two weeks, so the Angels centerfielder knows how stressful the run-up to Saturday’s trade deadline has been for the team’s GM.

“Do you hurt your future or do you try to get someone now?” Hunter said in the wake of Sunday’s deal that brought ace Dan Haren to Anaheim and sent four players, including left-hander Joe Saunders and two highly regarded pitching prospects, to Arizona.

“I don’t know. You have to weigh it, sit down, have a glass of Scotch, try to figure it out … and hopefully it doesn’t turn out like Babe Ruth.”

Ruth, of course, was the pitcher/outfielder who played his first five years in Boston before the Red Sox sold him to the New York Yankees for $100,000 on Dec. 26, 1919 -- not a trade deadline deal, but significant nonetheless.

The slugger went on to hit 659 of his 714 career home runs in New York, leading the Yankees to four World Series titles. It only took the Red Sox, oh, 85 years to recover. Their World Series win in 2004 was their first since 1918.

Many think the Angels got the better of the Diamondbacks in the deal for Haren, who is signed through 2012 and joins Jered Weaver and Ervin Santana at the top of the Angels rotation.

But Saunders, who went 54-32 with a 4.29 earned run average in five years, is no slouch. And what if the two prospects in the deal, left-handers Patrick Corbin and Tyler Skaggs, develop into front-of-the-rotation starters?

“You have to weigh the pros and cons of each decision,” said Reagins, who also gave up two pitchers to acquire third baseman Alberto Callaspo from Kansas City last week. “It’s always tough to part with prospects, but when you get an opportunity to get a front-line guy, you have to take advantage of it.”

Clearly, being a GM isn’t for the faint of heart, but it’s never more demanding than in the days and hours leading up to the non-waiver trade deadline, which this year is 1 p.m. PDT Saturday.

Through countless phone calls, e-mails and text messages with GMs and conversations with owners, managers and scouts, GMs must decide whether to roll the dice and deal for a player they think will vault them into playoff or World Series contention or sit out the hand and wait for a better deal.

Or maybe they’ll bluff, as former Houston GM Gerry Hunsicker thought he did in 1998, when he left his office a few hours before the deadline, telling everyone he had given up on acquiring then-Seattle ace Randy Johnson.

Four hours later, wearing slippers and working from home, he sent pitchers John Halama and Freddy Garcia and infielder Carlos Guillen to Seattle for a future Hall of Famer in one of the more dramatic midsummer deals in recent history.

Johnson spent two months in Houston before leaving as a free agent, but he went 10-1 with a 1.28 ERA and 116 strikeouts in 84-1/3 innings, helping the Astros win a division crown and 100 games.

That was hardly the last time a team would trade for a title. Two years ago, Dodgers GM Ned Colletti picked up Manny Ramirez from Boston in a three-way deal at the deadline, and the slugger helped propel the Dodgers to the National League championship series.

“It’s tough to make deals any time of the year, but it’s easier to do it at this time,” Colletti said. “In the winter, there’s always a reason not to do something.”

That same July, the Milwaukee Brewers traded for left-hander CC Sabathia, who went 11-2 with a 1.65 ERA down the stretch, leading the Brewers to the playoffs for the first time in 25 years.

If a GM is gun-shy in July, it’s usually because they’re unwilling to part with highly regarded youngsters such as Clayton Kershaw, the Dodgers’ 22-year-old lefty.

“We were offered only short-term fixes,” Colletti said of recent deadline deals he’s turned down. “We weren’t offered players who were at the same stages in their careers. The best players were always going into free agency.”

Not all midseason deals pay off. While summer blockbusters can make a franchise and a GM’s reputation, they can also hinder both.

Consider the 1964 trade in which the Chicago Cubs acquired a pair of former 20-game winners -- Ernie Broglio and Bobby Shantz -- from St. Louis.

The Cardinals got future Hall of Famer Lou Brock.

The Cubs tied a franchise-record with 103 losses two years later, while the Cardinals won two of the next four World Series.

And a year before the Mariners sent Johnson to the Astros, they dealt prospects Derek Lowe and Jason Varitek to Boston for pitcher Heathcliff Slocumb.

Lowe has 151 wins and is a two-time All-Star, and Varitek, a three-time All-Star, has caught more games than any player in Red Sox history. Slocumb went 2-9 in two seasons in Seattle.

Which is why some of the best trades are the ones teams don’t make, like in 1995, when the Yankees refused to deal a skinny minor league pitcher for All-Star lefty David Wells.

That minor leaguer, Mariano Rivera, went on to become the best closer in baseball history.

And Wells? The Yankees signed him as a free agent a year later, anyway.

“You can’t operate out of fear,” Reagins said. “If you do, you lose an edge. Sometimes you have to take risks. You have to prepare and be confident in your decision-making.”

mike.digiovanna@latimes.com

kevin.baxter@latimes.com