The trade deadline offered answers for some teams. We know now that the Baltimore Orioles were serious about listening to offers for Adley Rutschman. We know now that the Detroit Tigers were serious about seeking a young pitcher as part of the return for Tarik Skubal. And we know now that John Mozeliak really did have free reign to rebuild the Los Angeles Angels.But there were still plenty of questions raised by this deadline. So let’s answer some!The questions have been edited for clarity.Could the Tigers have gotten more for Skubal than they did? — William S. How on Earth did the Dodgers get Skubal for so little? This trade is incomprehensible to me. How and why did no other team make a better offer? — Craig S. If the Los Angeles Dodgers had finalized the Skubal trade with the Tigers at 5:45 p.m. on Monday evening, I suspect there would have been less criticism about the return package of outfielder Zyhir Hope, pitcher River Ryan and pitcher Brady Smith. In talking to people around the game, the general response I received is that Detroit got somewhere between fair value and a slight underpay for Skubal. And even the folks who believe Hope can become an All-Star and Ryan can be a legit dude sooner rather than later understood that this was a slam dunk for the Dodgers, who are leveraged to win now in search of a three-peat and have the financial resources to offset any farm system depletion.No, the big question coming out of rival front offices about the Skubal trade was the timing. Why did this deal happen on Saturday night? Why didn’t Detroit hold out for a better offer?Waiting would not have made a difference, Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris said earlier this week.“Markets at the deadline for the top players are just different than the rest of the market,” he said. “So, I understand the intuition that, ‘Hey, you’re supposed to wait until the very last second on a deal and then pull a trigger at the very last second to maximize a return.’ That’s not how markets for the top players work.”In a way, this comes back to the expanded postseason. Every contender should want Tarik Skubal, right? Well, every contender knew the Tigers were going to charge a high price. That narrows his market. Most front offices won’t trade a prospect haul for a rental who might push them from the No. 5 seed to the No. 3 seed. A team on the fringes of the wild-card chase won’t go all-in just to qualify for a three-game series on the road. The postseason structure just does not reward that type of thinking. Why won’t more teams do what the Brewers did in 2008 with CC Sabathia? Because there are three wild card spots now, not just one.The only clubs truly incentivized to chase Skubal were those where his presence might meaningfully change their championship odds. The type of teams that can imagine him starting Game 1 of the World Series. On Aug. 1, the day before Skubal was dealt, the teams with the best chance to win the title, per FanGraphs, were the Dodgers (31.4 percent), Yankees (10.6 percent) and the Brewers (9.4 percent). The talks with the Yankees went nowhere because the Tigers sought shortstop George Lombard Jr., Brian Cashman said. The Brewers made a compelling offer, led by shortstop prospect Luis Peña as reported by MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy, but could not find a match. Detroit wanted to include a controllable young starter like Logan Henderson, and Milwaukee was unwilling to do that.To hear Harris tell it, the Tigers squeezed all the juice out of this particular orange.“There wasn’t any need to stretch it any further,” he said. “The organizations that were involved were extremely aggressive, and they put in what I believe to be their max offers. And then they added to those offers also and got to the point of almost audible pain when they actually produced their best bold offers. And they gave it to us, and we pulled the trigger. The notion that we should’ve waited 24 or 48 hours later and extracted more value — that’s garbage.”There has been a lot of consternation on X, and on various social platforms about the Tigers choosing the Dodgers’ offer over the Brewers’ offer. I get it. If you tote up the surplus values for the various packages, you can find analysis that suggests Detroit should have taken Milwaukee’s deal. And maybe they should have just taken the best overall package of players, rather than searching for a package that met specific needs. But Skubal was their player, and trading him was their prerogative. Harris set a bar that the pursuing clubs had to clear, and part of that clearance appears to have involved including a talented young pitcher. The Dodgers cleared the bar. If the Brewers did not, well, there you have it. If you want the player, you’ve got to give up the stuff the other team wants in return.As a Tigers fan, I don’t get it. Prospects never all peak at the same time. What’s the point of drafting and developing guys like Skubal and Casey Mize just to trade them away and restart? By the time the next guys come around it will be time to dump (Riley) Greene and Spencer Torkelson, etc., and we’ll forever be on the treadmill. It happens, ever watch the Red Wings? — Gabriel F. I must be honest with you: I do not ever watch the Detroit Red Wings. I will never forgive Kirk Maltby for what he did to the Flyers in the 1997 Stanley Cup finals.Brewers: Timid. Cubs: Bold. Timid always loses. Watch and see. — Mark Z. Well, I think the Brewers are still a better baseball team than the Cubs, and I expect Milwaukee to win the National League Central for the fourth year in a row. I will be curious to see if the Crew can help Dustin May’s results match his underlying metrics. That dude throws quite hard. I’ll also be curious to see if the Brewers can fix lefty JoJo Romero’s reverse splits. (Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Max Muncy are all left-handed hitters, in case you were wondering.) Antonio Senzatela will surely benefit from leaving Colorado. All good things.But I was also impressed by Chicago’s moves. I don’t care that Kevin Gausman’s ERA is a bit worse this year than in previous years. The stuff is still there, the fastball is still excellent and he’s a gamer. When he’s been able to take the field, Clay Holmes has pitched quite well since transitioning into the starting rotation these past two seasons. So the Cubs certainly got better. Maybe these two teams will meet up again in October. That would be fun.