Not all trades turn heads. Often, a team deals a player who is too expensive for its current context -- payroll, chances of contention, depth of the organization, etc. -- for a player or players who are less expensive and whose potential value mostly lies in the future.
But sometimes less-celebrated deals turn out to be more fun than we initially thought. We might not find that out until the next season is underway, when at that point all we can do is shrug our shoulders and say, "Who knew?"
Defining an under-the-radar deal is a subjective exercise but mostly, I just looked at the list of trade pickups since the end of last season with the players sorted by 2025 AXE ratings, which I use as the basis for my Awards Watch rankings.