This year’s trade deadline provided a sustained, entertaining chaos the likes of which Major League Baseball has never seen. In June and July, there were 43 trades—the most since at least 1997—involving 21 All-Stars—the most since at least 1999—and every team with the exception of Arizona made at least one move.

It’s too early to declare winners and losers with any confidence; nobody will know for months or even years whether the Royals will regret surrendering a rotation’s worth of pitching prospects for a pair of rentals.

Anyway, it’s common to discuss these things in binary terms—teams are buyers or sellers, winners or losers—but the market has become much more nuanced in the various approaches teams take to making deals.

So instead of a winners vs. losers breakdown that you can find on dozens of other websites, let’s take a look …

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This year’s July trading frenzy had a late start, as the first deal of substance was not consummated until eight days before the deadline. But boy has it been a fun ride in the week since Houston struck first, dealing two prospects to Oakland for pitcher Scott Kazmir.

We’ve seen traditional minnows outbid the big-market sharks and make the biggest splashes. We’ve seen teams flip-flop from buyers to sellers and vice-versa (including one that, incidentally, seems likely not to trade its Shark – Jeff Samardzija). We’ve woken up to a surprise midnight swap of the two highest-paid shortstops in the game. And, as coverage of the trade deadline has become an industry unto itself, we’ve been entertained by countless rumors of deals big and small.

Houston might have launched the flurry of activity, but the Astros haven’t been the only American League contender to …

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As commissioner of Major League Baseball, Rob Manfred has inherited from Bud Selig the responsibility and obligation to oversee a promising and appropriate practice of diversity hiring. Based on a comment he made last week, Manfred may be getting off to as questionable a start on the initiative as Selig had a finish.

I called Manfred last week to ask him a question for this column, telling him I was writing about MLB’s former scouting bureau director and his laudable record of diversity hiring.

“That should be a fun column for your readers,” the commissioner remarked, his words soaked with sarcasm.

I suppose his remark could be interpreted in different ways, but hearing it first-hand, I didn’t see it as a positive view of diversity hiring or coming from someone who was going to …

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