A week after striking the deal that left many who work in baseball thunderstruck, Frank Wren was still a bit giddy and very much grateful. He’d gone into the offseason looking to remake his team, but he never believed any makeover would include Justin Upton.

“I really didn’t,” Wren said Tuesday, speaking after Upton was officially introduced as an Atlanta Brave. “I liked the idea when it was presented as a possibility, but the reality is that it’s very hard to get young players in their prime, players with his ability.”

In the NBA, general managers have a saying: You don’t trade for superstars – you draft them or you pay them $100 million when they become free agents. The Braves’ GM just traded for a 25-year-old who isn’t yet a superstar but of whom Wren said, “He has that potential.”

The addition of a major talent is only one facet of this windfall. There’s also the matter of timing. Since the Braves got good in 1991, they’ve had two touchstones: First the Hall of Fame pitching, then the Hall of Fame third baseman. Chipper Jones has retired, leaving the Braves to ask: Whose team are we now?

Said Wren: “You only had to look down in the stands and see the number of No. 10 jerseys to know whose team it was. We knew we were going to be transitioning, and we were looking for that player throughout the winter. And quite frankly, in free agency we didn’t find that young superstar player that you could wrap your arms around and say, ‘This is a key building block for the future.’ That’s what made this trade so intriguing for us, and that’s why we stayed on it for almost two months.”

Don’t be confused: B.J. Upton, signed as a free agent in December, is a good player who, at 28, still has a chance to become an All-Star; Justin Upton, three years younger, has already been an All-Star twice, and in 2011 – not so long ago – he finished fourth in the voting for National League MVP.

Hiring B.J. Upton was a way for the Braves to replace Michael Bourn in center field; acquiring B.J.’s brother little-but-bigger brother could well transform this franchise. The latter move wasn’t a case of filling a need. It was the rare example of a club asking, “What’s the best move we could possibly make?” – and then making it.

There’s yet another aspect to this fascinating transaction: What was Arizona thinking? The reason teams don’t trade for (potential) superstars is because teams possessed of such talents almost never let them go – especially not with three contractual years remaining. This has led some to speculate that the Diamondbacks must have had a hidden reason for doing what nobody can believe they did.

Surely the Braves were given cause to wonder. But, as Wren noted, he pondered this move for two months. That’s time enough to do any due diligence. Given that Upton is here, it stands to reason that his new employer could find no disqualifiers. (Did he have a big 2012 season? No. He managed only 17 homers and 67 RBI’s a year after generating 31 and 88. He also had a bad thumb, and he still scored 107 runs with an on-base percentage of .355.)

Why were the D-backs determined to dump J-Up, who’d already nixed a trade to Seattle? Nobody knows, but the best loose guess is that Arizona GM Kevin Towers is seeking to build a roster in manager Kirk Gibson’s blood-and-guts image, and that talent is seen as less essential than a dirty uniform. (In that regard, the hustling Martin Prado figures to be Towers’ type of player.)

It should also be noted that Arizona traded 22-year-old pitcher Trevor Bauer in December, the same Trevor Bauer it drafted No. 3 overall in June 2011. So it could just be that the D-backs are, ahem, d-luded. As Grantland’s Jonah Keri wrote of the Upton deal: “When the information at hand so aggressively pushes you toward one opinion of a trade, there’s a strong chance the trade that looks like a stinker truly is a stinker.”

He meant for the Diamondbacks. For the Braves, this trade seems a blessing from a benevolent deity. They already had some of the best young players in baseball, and in Justin Upton they might have found the straw, to borrow a vintage quote, that stirs the drink. Said Wren: “Justin adds such an integral part to what we hope our offense will be.”

Someone noted that the 2012 Braves won 94 games. “That’s a hefty number,” Wren said, and it stands to get heftier.

Yes, this is baseball, where dreaming is easy and winning rather harder. But when Wren was asked if this is the best team he has assembled in five-plus years on the job, he said: “I’d like to think so.”