This is how much fun the National League East was last season: The Braves chased the Mets all the way across the summer and finally caught them at the end to win the division, even though both of them ended up winning 101 games. You know what happened after that. It was the Phillies who ended up making it to the World Series, where the whole world saw them give a great Astros team all it wanted.

And guess what?

The division might get even better next season. And it might get more interesting than it’s already been during what has been as crazy and interesting of an offseason as baseball has ever seen, in the NL East and everywhere else.

You know the Blue Jays are coming for the Yankees over in the AL East. The Padres are coming hard for the Dodgers, and the Giants just added Carlos Correa after looking like first runner-up in the Aaron Judge Sweepstakes. But even with all that, and with the great Bryce Harper recovering from Tommy John surgery and not expected to be back in the Phillies’ batting order until the summer, the NL East looks like the one to watch.

Again.

The Mets added Justin Verlander to replace Jacob deGrom and signed Japanese star Kodai Senga before they lost Chris Bassitt to the Jays. They added both right-handed and left-handed bullpen help and apparently even kicked the tires on Correa before he signed his huge deal with the Giants. The Braves just swung a trade for A’s catcher Sean Murphy.

It’s worth remembering that the Braves are going to get Ozzie Albies back after injuries limited him to just 64 games in 2022. Albies had finally recovered from a foot injury before breaking his pinky finger in September, ending his season for good. And you know that the Phillies added Trea Turner to their World Series team, reuniting him with his old Nationals teammate Harper when Harper is once again ready to swing a bat.

That’s the top of your division right there, a beast of an East, absolutely.
I asked Dave Dombrowski, the head of baseball operations in Philadelphia and one who just saw a fourth team of his make it to the World Series, about the division on Wednesday.

“We look forward to the challenge,” Dombrowski said.

Then he added this, after already having added Turner and right-handed starter Taijuan Walker, who won 12 games for the Mets last season:

“There are still more moves to be made.”

Dombrowski never sits back. You saw what he did with the Phillies last summer, even when the Mets and Braves were running away with things, not conceding anything if he could just get the Phillies into the tournament. So he got Brandon Marsh and Noah Syndergaard from the Angels and David Robertson from the Cubs (now a Met, because you really do need a scorecard these days in the East to keep track of everybody), and Harper’s elbow got healthy enough to DH, nearly carrying the Phillies to their first title in 14 seasons.

Now the Phillies are looking to do more than get a Wild Card. They’re in there swinging away, especially with the Mets, owned by Steve Cohen, who has been more aggressive than any other owner in the sport since his team lost its Wild Card Series to the Padres after failing to win the NL East from the Braves in the last week of the regular season.

“Our division,” Mets manager Buck Showalter said, “is not going to be for the faint of heart. But it’s like a couple of my coaches texted me the other day, same message: ‘Let’s go.’”

The Mets grabbed the division lead early, and had that lead in double figures. But the Braves, who have now won the NL East for five straight years and who were trying to defend their own World Series title, refused to go away. It was like those scenes from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” when Butch and Sundance kept looking over their shoulders at the super posse chasing them, and saying, “Who are those guys?”

Those guys were the Braves. But then they ran into the Phillies in October, when the Phillies got hot, sweeping the Cardinals in their Wild Card Series, beating the Braves in four games in the NL Division Series and then giving the Padres just one game in the NL Championship Series before running into the Astros. The Phillies even got ahead, two games to one, in the World Series before the Astros ran the table from there.

Now here we are. The Phillies made a big free-agent play with Turner. The Mets, once deGrom was gone to Texas, went right after Verlander and put him at the top of their rotation with Max Scherzer, with whom he was once at the top of a rotation in Detroit. The Braves just got Murphy, and they probably aren’t done yet, and certainly aren’t ready to give up the East without a fight.

“It looks like an exciting year,” Dombrowski said, “with quality clubs.”

You think? Buck’s right. Let’s go.