It looks like we're headed for a much different race in the National League East than last season, when the Atlanta Braves cruised to a division title behind a record-setting offense. They spent just one day out of first place after their third game of the season and pulled away in the second half to win the division by a whopping 14 games.
The Philadelphia Phillies have reversed their slow starts of the past two seasons — when they were under .500 at the beginning of June — to become the hottest team in baseball, led by a deep starting rotation and a locked-in Bryce Harper. They moved into first place in the NL East last weekend as they swept a four-game series from the Giants while the Braves suffered a sweep at the hands of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Washington Nationals and New York Mets, meanwhile, are hanging around .500, which puts them in the thick of the wild-card chase. And the Miami Marlins, last year's surprise wild-card team… Well, they're on pace for the worst record in franchise history.
With the Braves and Mets squaring off on Sunday Night Baseball this weekend at 7 p.m. ET, let's take stock of the division with 10 questions, starting with Atlanta and New York.
The easy answer: probably nothing. But after the Dodgers held the Braves to six runs in last weekend's three-game sweep, it's hard to not compare this offense to last year's, which set an NL record with 307 home runs and became the first team to slug .500 in a season. Of course that wasn't going to happen again. Using FanGraphs' weighted runs created metric, which adjusts for league offensive levels and home park, the 2023 Braves matched the legendary 1927 Yankees as the best offense of all time. That's a tough act to repeat.
Indeed, here are the
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Bryce Harper