Well, well, well. The trade deadline is less than a week away, and the mailbag was absolutely humming with questions about the strategy and chicanery to come in the days ahead. Let’s get to it.Some questions have been edited for clarity. It feels like if the Brewers don’t go all in, like they did with CC Sabathia, and trade for Tarik Skubal, then the Dodgers will, and thus end Milwaukee’s hopes of the Fall Classic yet again. With the Brewers so close to being the best team in the National League, would they? Should they? — Tanner T. We begin with a version of the central question of the trade deadline: Whither Tarik Skubal? The answer is not yet clear. Detroit probably should trade him. This was not the plan when the season began. But the team has been below .500 since May 5. On Monday morning, FanGraphs pegged their championship odds at 2.6 percent. Feels like a good time to sell. Tigers executive Scott Harris will set an exorbitant price for Skubal, as he should. But that price tag will discourage some buyers, which limits the number of teams in the mix, and reduces the chances Skubal actually switches teams.You mentioned two of the four acquiring clubs that make the most sense. The other two would be the Braves and the Rays. Of those four, I’d set the Brewers as the least likely to make the move. The Sabathia comp has come up so often this year that I feel like folks forget that the 2008 Milwaukee Brewers did not, in fact, win the World Series. They lost in the NLDS. Sabathia gave up a grand slam. He was awesome as a Brewer, and I think it’s pretty cool that the team put him on the Wall of Honor, but the acquisition of Sabathia did not end the team’s championship drought. So I don’t know how persuasive that argument would be to Brewers exec Matt Arnold.It was Theo Epstein who said, after acquiring Aroldis Chapman for his Chicago Cubs in the summer of 2016, “If not now, when?” That is the dilemma. This past decade has been the best in Brewers history. And they are well-situated to rule the National League Central for the rest of this decade, too. I just don’t think that right now is their “when.” They got to this point through discipline. I suspect that instinct will carry the day through this deadline. Should they cast that quality aside and go for it? I’ll tell you this: I bet the Dodgers wouldn’t be thrilled to see Skubal suited up for Milwaukee in October. That should tell you something.The Dodgers are pursuing a three-peat, but the team’s recent trade deadlines have been characterized by restraint. Is the idea of a dynasty important enough to the front office and ownership that it would motivate uncharacteristic aggression? The team has too many chips to shove all-in, but could the front office have a “damn the torpedoes” moment? — Jay O. Now, now. Any student of Dodgers history knows they won’t damn the torpedoes. They will burn the ships. This is canon.I think if you injected the team’s brass with sodium pentothal, they would tell you that they already view this group as a dynasty. It is hard to argue otherwise. Three World Series rings this decade. The first back-to-back championships in 25 years. Winners of the National League West in 12 of the past 13 seasons, with another division crown on the way in 2026. The last time the Dodgers missed the postseason occurred during Barack Obama’s first term in office. This is, truly, the Golden Era of Los Angeles Dodgers baseball.And so, this deadline is the same story as always for Andrew Friedman. You know the buzzwords. Optionality. Hang around the backboard. Be opportunistic. They are tapped into every market and capable of anything. (Except Mason Miller.) They don’t want to overpay, but they will if they must. They would consider swapping some of their outfield prospect surplus for infield or catching prospects, but those types of trades make more sense in the offseason, and not many people in the South Bay really care about the prospect rankings. They just want to know if Skubal is coming to town. Friedman often shoots for the top of the market when he senses the team has a specific need: Yu Darvish in 2017, Manny Machado in 2018, Max Scherzer and Trea Turner in 2021. But they have been less aggressive in recent years, in part because the team has not featured glaring holes.The question will be, as the Dodgers monitor Skubal’s market, just how worried are they about their starting pitching? Blake Snell should be fine for October. But it is hard to bet on Tyler Glasnow’s readiness. And the “regression” that Shohei Ohtani experienced in his left knee after last week’s bullpen session sounds worrisome, at the very least. Perhaps Ohtani, who on Tuesday also told reporters that his biceps issue remained a concern, will be back to his usual two-way antics by August. But the specter of injury is never far for him, given the immensity of his physical tasks. So that would create an opening for Skubal. And the Dodgers have the prospects necessary to make the deal, and their desire to see him not in a Brewers uniform might only enhance the interest.Or they could stand pat, wait for the reinforcements to arrive from the injured list and hope Ohtani can make it through the season. Optionality, and all that.Has there ever been a buyer’s market? — DO I GO H. Certainly not since MLB expanded the postseason.Speaking of …Will the Guardians ever be buyers? – Sam S. As long as they continue to play in the American League Central, in an era of expanded postseason, I don’t foresee it.Speaking of …Despite the joyride the Red Sox have taken recently, I expect this team to finish the season right around .500. They may squeak into the postseason, and it’s clear they can go on a tear and could go deep into October if they’re hot when it counts.My question is: how can baseball justify a playoff structure that would allow a deeply mediocre team—one which could lose more than half its regular season games—to make a run at a championship? It would be embarrassing for baseball if a sub-.500 team won the World Series. It creates incentives for ownership to put together mediocre teams knowing that’s “good enough” to make the playoffs and have a shot.How can we restore the integrity of postseason baseball by reserving all the slots for the best teams? — Nunya B. Spoken like someone who took this 2020 column to heart.This is the system the stakeholders of the sport – the players and the owners — collectively bargained to create after the 2021 season. The expanded postseason generates money in the form of television deals and ticket sales and all that jazz. Indeed, it would be a tad embarrassing if a 79-win team won the World Series. But the checks would still clear. So it goes.Can you identify a time when a front office/owner hubristically bought at the trade deadline to bolster a mediocre team, and won it all? Has this ever worked? — Dorkus Malorkus This next answer is going to be quite controversial in a place where I used to live. But in the past decade, I have been surprised by the number of officials from other teams who have characterized the 2015 Kansas City Royals in this way. At the deadline that summer, Dayton Moore crafted two significant prospect packages to acquire starting pitcher Johnny Cueto and super-utility man Ben Zobrist. Those guys, Zobrist especially, helped the team win its first World Series since 1985.