I have a friend who can’t pronounce or spell the name of the Toronto Blue Jays general manager, but he thinks Alex Anthopoulos is the greatest human being since Albert Schweitzer. Major League Baseball executive of the year? That would be a minor acknowledgement of what Anthopoulos has executed:

On July 28 he traded for shortstop Troy Tulowitzki and relief pitcher LaTroy Hawkins.

On July 30 he acquired starting pitcher David Price.

On July 31 he obtained left fielder Ben Revere and reliever Mark Lowe.

Before you start trying to figure out whom Schweitzer traded for, he was famous for his humanitarian efforts, not trades. The similarity I suggest with Anthopoulos is the general manager’s deals have instilled life in the Blue Jays, who were headed for 2015 oblivion; awakened the city of Toronto and brightened baseball for all of Canada.

Before Anthopoulos engaged in his frenzy of trade-deadline activity, the Blue Jays were in fourth place in the American League East, 8 games behind the Yankees with a 50-51 record. They did not resemble a playoff contender.

Since Anthopoulos began his mid-season makeover with the acquisition of Tulowitzki, the Blue Jays have won 13 of 14 games (through Wednesday), leap-frogging the Yankees into the division lead with the league’s best won-lost record.

The most critical games in that stretch have been the weekend sweep of the Yankees in New York. Those games were critical not only because the Blue Jays had to reduce the Yankees’ lead over them before it grew even larger but also because of their need to show the Yankees they were capable of challenging them in the eight weeks remaining in the season.

“It was an important series for us,” Anthopoulos said in a telephone interview earlier this week. “But we didn’t have to win all three games. If we had won two, we would have gained a game. Even if we won one, we would have been okay.”

It was easy for the general manager to say that after the fact, but the reality is the Blue Jays began the series 4 ½ games behind the Yankees and couldn’t really afford to fall farther back even though the teams would have another 10 games to play.

Anthopoulos, though, wasn’t ready to do somersaults and handstands. “We’re still behind them,” he cautioned, a status that changed three days later.

Should the Blue Jays win the division title, it would raise questions about the judgment of Anthopoulos’ Yankees’ counterpart, Brian Cashman, who as the trade deadline approached stood smugly silent.

However, just the other day Hal Steinbrenner, who succeeded his late father as the Yankees’ operating owner, said he made the decision not to trade any of the organization’s young prospects to bolster the team’s post-season chances.

“I just wasn’t going to do it,” Steinbrenner told reporters at the owners’ quarterly meetings in Chicago. “I don’t think we kind of had the glaring need that you would address by giving up one of your Triple-A prospects, especially not for a loaner, for a guy you’re going to have three months or so. It’s just not something we were going to consider.”

Steinbrenner’s comment did not convince me that he was being completely forthcoming. I have seen examples of what I suspect is his attempt to act the opposite of his father, and perhaps this is a glaring example of that plan. Keeping top prospects, which the Yankees have seldom done, instead of trading them for high-priced veterans would be unusual.

Or maybe Steinbrenner was just covering for Cashman, who could have pursued Tulowitzki last winter when the Yankees needed a shortstop to replace Derek Jeter but traded for a cheaper Didi Gregorius instead.

Passing on players such as Tulowitzki and Price last month, Cashman made one insignificant deal, acquiring a utility player, Dustin Ackley, while other teams snatched the starting pitchers who were available. One of those was Price, who can be a free agent after the season and who would have cost some highly considered minor leaguers.

Anthopoulos was willing to pay the price, not only for Price but also for Tulowitzki.

“I felt like we had a good team but also felt we underachieved,” Anthopoulos said. “We were playing a lot of games against teams we were competing with and wanted to tighten our defense and bullpen.”

One sign of the Blue Jays’ underachievement was their run differential. When Anthopoulos began his flurry of trades, the Blue Jays had the best run differential in the league – 530 runs scored, 436 runs allowed – but they had a losing record.

The Anthopoulos plan was expensive: $107.4 million for the rest of this season and the next five years for Tulowitzki, $7 million for Price, $1.45 million for Revere, $836,000 for Hawkins, a total of about $117 million, or nearly as much as the Blue Jays’ opening day payroll.

“We talked about Tulowitzki in the off-season, but it didn’t go anywhere,” Anthopoulos said. The money he was owed was a factor, Anthopoulos said, and the Rockies didn’t want to take shortstop Jose Reyes in the trade.

When the talks resumed this season, the Rockies, apparently more eager to shed the contract, were open to taking Reyes and the $56 million he is owed.

“We went back and forth with the young players we were going to put on the deal,” Anthopoulos said. “Finally we relented in the end. We didn’t want to give up any of our terrific young guys, but we did.”

Why were the Blue Jays willing to give up what they had to give up?

“We felt Tulo was the best player at his position, possibly the best player in baseball,” Anthopoulos said. “He was going to help you not only now but in the future. That was a long-term decision.”

Anthopoulos was more certain about the shortstop’s future than his own. He is in the last year of his contract, and there’s been no discussion of an extension.

“I don’t worry about my status,” he said. “Tulo was important for the franchise.”

Anthopoulos said he pursued Revere to play left field because “we didn’t have true outfielders playing the outfield. We were using infielders.”

Price, he said, “is as good as it gets. He’s a true No. 1 starter. “We thought he’d be a big piece to add. We gave up good young players for him. We didn’t want to but there’s not many David Prices out there.”

The left-hander, who will be 30 years old in two weeks, won his first two starts for the Blue Jays, allowing only one run in15 innings for a 0.60 earned run average.

Does Anthopoulos plan to try to sign the Price instead of letting him leave the Blue Jays as a free agent?

“We haven’t thought about it,” the general manager said. “We’ll deal with that at the end of the year.”

If Anthopoulos is still the Blue Jays’ general manager.