When the Detroit Tigers made a trade at the winter meetings many years ago, their modest manager, Sparky Anderson, proudly proclaimed, “I just got smarter.” When the Tigers acquired a pitcher, Doyle Alexander, Aug. 12, 1987, Anderson had no clue how much smarter he had just become. Alexander started 11 games for the Tigers and won nine, pitching three shutouts. The Tigers also won the other two. In those 11 games, Alexander registered a 1.58 earned run average. The Tigers accomplished what they wanted when the traded for the right-hander. They won the American League East championship.

Will Cole Hamels be this year’s Doyle Alexander? Or maybe it will be J.A. Happ. What about Lance Lynn? And let’s not forget Nathan Eovaldi.

All four of those pitchers were acquired in the last month in the annual game of roster resurrection, in which teams with high-priced players they don’t plan to re-sign trade them to contending teams willing to give up promising youngsters for the rare chance to go to and win the World Series. Few of the moves accomplish the trading teams’ goal. Sometimes the results are mixed.

The 1987 Tigers won the division title with Alexander’s remarkable assistance but lost the World Series to Minnesota and a future Hall of Famer, John Smoltz, the prospect, to the Braves.

The Smoltz outcome was rare, very rare, and stands out for its rarity. Another unusual development occurred more recently and provided a different twist. Two years ago the Cubs sought an established closer and offered the Yankees a package of four young players for Aroldis Chapman, whom the Yankees had acquired seven months earlier from Cincinnati.

Chapman pitched in eight post-season games for the Cubs, including Game 7, in which he was the winning pitcher in the game that brought the Cubs their first World Series championship since 1908.

Chapman did not remain with the Cubs for long. He became a free agent after the season and rejoined the Yankees six weeks later. He also produced a bonus for them. The player package the Cubs offered for Chapman included Gleyber Torres, who has become the Yankees’ second baseman this season.

When the season reaches the time for roster resurrection, pitchers usually are the primary target, but they are not miracle workers. Only sometimes. Like Alexander. Last season the Yankees acquired two starting pitchers and were not rewarded favorably for their efforts.

Sonny Gray compiled a 4-7 record with a 3.72 earned run average in 11 starts, and Jaimie Garcia turned in an 0-3 record and 4.82 e.r.a. in 8 starts. This year’s newcomers have made a better start.

Happ, who has experienced his fourth trade in the past nine Julys, started his fourth game for the Yankees Sunday against Toronto, one of his former teams, and raised his Yankees’ record to 4-0 with a 2.21 e.r.a.

The best post-trade record a year ago was Justin Verlander’s 5-0, 1.06 e.r.a; for Houston.

Lynn, Happ’s new teammate, emerged with a 1-0 record and 2.61 e.r.a. from his first three starts and a relief appearance with the Yankees.

Happ has been a good, if not great, post-trade pitcher, running up records of 5-4 with Houston in 2010, 3-2 with Toronto in ’12 and 7-2 with a 1.85 e.r.a. with Pittsburgh in ’15.

The way the Boston Red Sox have played this entire season they don’t seem to need a July cavalry, but they obtained Eovaldi nevertheless, and he produced a 2-0 record and a 1.99 e.r.a. in his first four starts.

Then there is Hamels, who excited the Cubs with a 3-0 record and 0.72 e.r.a. in his first four starts. Nobody should be surprised. After he was traded to Texas in July 2015, Hamels registered a 7-1 record and 3.66 e.r.a. in 12 starts.

Aside from Alexander, though, there is only one pitcher who stands out in my mind for his post-July trade performance. The Cleveland Indians traded CC Sabathia to the Milwaukee Brewers July 7, 2008. He started 17 games for the Brewers and compiled an 11-2 record with a 1.65 e.r.a. He carried the Brewers to the post-season, where they lost to Philadelphia in the division series four games to one

HERNANDEZ TALKS 1.000

Unless I missed it, Keith Hernandez has not apologized for comments he made on a game broadcast last week about a Miami pitcher hitting a hot Atlanta hitter with a pitch. Good for Hernandez. Baseball has gone soft enough without muzzling a broadcaster and former player from discussing an issue he knows intimately well.

“They’re killing you,” Hernandez said, referring to Braves rookie Ronald Acuna Jr. “You lost three games. He’s hit three home runs. You got to hit him. I’m sorry, people aren’t going to like that. You know, you got to hit him, knock him down. I mean, seriously knock him down if you don’t hit him. You never throw at anybody’s head or neck. You hit him in the back. You hit him in the fanny.”

Hernandez’s comments provoked a torrent of criticism from fans and even media members. But he was right. That’s the way baseball has always been played, and the age of timidity shouldn’t change it.

Too much has already changed. Catcher Buster Posey is run over at the plate, and suddenly baserunners have to avoid running into catchers. Chase Utley roughly takes out an infielder at second base, and that old-time effort is banned.

Those new-age rules remind me of a softball league I played in years ago. Our third baseman got spiked – remember metal spikes? – by a sliding runner, and suddenly metal spikes were banned.

Batters are hit all the time, whether they’re hot or not. The late Don Baylor was hit 267 times in his career and never complained, just dropped his bat and took his base. Not all players are as strong and as tough as Baylor was so it wouldn’t surprise me if next off-season Commissioner Rob Manfred devises a rule about HPB.

It could mimic the intentional walk rule. If a team wants to hit a batter, signal the intent, and the runner goes to first without being imperiled by a 100-mile-an-hour fast ball.

DIFFERENT KEITH, DIFFERENT DISPUTE

After watching the latest Mets-Yankees game on ESPN and hearing and reading the reaction to Keith Olbermann’s appearance as play-by-play announcer, I was going to write about it. I was especially attracted by comments on Olbermann by Mike Francesca, a bombastic announcer I have never listened to but of whom a highly knowledgeable friend said he is too dumb to know what he doesn’t know.

I have never been an Olbermann fan, but I enjoyed the ESPN telecast, finding it more enjoyable than the usual Yankees telecasts. Olbermann was funny; Michael Kay is never funny. He is always too busy trying to polish the style he has adopted, which is objectionable enough to prompt listeners to mute the sound and simply watch the game.