DODGERS: SOME DEALS WERE GOOD, SOME WERE NOT.

Byline: TONY JACKSON 

Staff Writer

The madness will end at 1 this afternoon.

The rumor mill will officially stop grinding. Major-league general managers, many of them having burned up every last rollover minute left on their cell phone plans, will stop and catch their breath. And those players who were fortunate enough -- or, in some cases, unfortunate enough -- to have avoided being shipped off to a new team in the middle of the season, will stop worrying.

For another month, anyway.

Baseball's annual non-waiver trading deadline will come and go today, although the operative word there is non-waiver. In the coming days, almost every player in the majors will be placed on waivers for the sole purpose of seeing who can go 72 hours without being claimed by another team. Of those who are claimed, almost all of them will be pulled back by their current clubs, at which point they really can rest easy in the knowledge that they aren't going anywhere this season.

Those who aren't claimed can still be traded, although any deal has to be made no later than Aug. 31 -- the real trading deadline -- for those players to be eligible for the playoffs. Any deals made a month from now, though, tend to be minor, at least in their original appearance. But the Dodgers acquired Marlon Anderson last Aug. 31, and he soon became their everyday left fielder when then-rookie Andre Ethier continued a late-season slide he later attributed to a sore shoulder.

But it is the moves made today, and in the days leading up to today, by which GMs often are judged. Those generally are the high-profile moves that can give a club the final piece it needs to reach the playoffs. They also are the kind of moves that can just as easily fizzle, often at the price of some of a club's best prospects.

In 2004, the first year any of the Dodgers' current players were on the team, then-GM Paul DePodesta made a flurry of moves in the final 48 hours. One of them, a six-player deal with Florida, would haunt DePodesta until the day he was fired some 15 months later. On July 30 of that year, DePodesta sent catcher Paul Lo Duca, a fan favorite and two-time All-Star, to Florida, along with fireballing setup man Guillermo Mota and everyday right fielder Juan Encarnacion. In return, the Dodgers got a minor-league lefty named Bill Murphy and a first baseman, Hee-Seop Choi, who eventually would become the symbol of DePodesta's downfall.

But they also got Brad Penny, the key to the whole deal. Penny famously left his second start for the Dodgers with a nerve problem in his right elbow and essentially missed the rest of the season. But now, almost two years after DePodesta was replaced by Ned Colletti, Penny is a two-time All-Star, the unquestionable ace of the Dodgers' rotation, and on pace to win 20 games and quite possibly the National League Cy Young Award.

Lo Duca went on to two more All-Star appearances. But his departure from the Dodgers eventually cleared the way for the emergence of Russell Martin, one of the game's rising stars.

The next day, DePodesta flipped Murphy to Arizona in a five-player deal that brought Steve Finley to the Dodgers, and two months later, Finley's walk-off grand slam won the National League West. In smaller deals that day, DePodesta sent Dave Roberts to Boston, where Roberts helped the Red Sox win their first World Series in 86 years, and Tom Martin to Atlanta. The Dodgers have never really missed either of them.

In 2005, when you had to use your imagination to believe the Dodgers still had a shot at the playoffs, DePodesta, perhaps wisely, did nothing at the deadline.

Last season, Colletti made three notable deals in the final four days. On July 28, he sent ineffective reliever Danys Baez and promising prospect Willy Aybar to Atlanta for Wilson Betemit. And while Betemit has had his ups and downs in this, his second year with the club, he hit nine homers in 55 games for the Dodgers after the trade. Baez, who has since signed with Baltimore as a free agent, was a bust for the Dodgers and is still a bust now. And Aybar went AWOL in late April and hasn't been heard from since.

Then, on July 31, Colletti sent Cesar Izturis to the Chicago Cubs for future Hall of Famer Greg Maddux. He then shipped minor-leaguers Joel Guzman and Sergio Pedroza to Tampa Bay for infielder Julio Lugo, who in theory would replace Izturis. Maddux helped the Dodgers reach the playoffs, then departed as a free agent and wound up with division rival San Diego. Lugo spent his two months with the Dodgers complaining, sometimes publicly, about not playing regularly, then also left as a free agent and signed with Boston.

Guzman and Pedroza remain in the minors, and Izturis, a former Gold Glove winner with the Dodgers, was traded last week to Pittsburgh.

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