Monday Quickie - quick divisional review

Sadly in baseball division mean less and less as they work to more "equal" schedules which are worse for players (travel), worse for the quality of baseball in general (travel and maybe a bit of juice lost), mostly neutral for home team fans (again juice lost - losing a bunch of games versus rivals to get a few games versus a team that might draw), but appease owners who want to make it as easy as possible to make the playoffs and don't like it when they are stuck in a tough division. 

Still you do play more games against your division so the quality of those teams do matter. That's been tough for the Nats as the Phillies, Braves and Mets have all been good recently and seem committed to winning right now. Has the off-season changed anything?

 Phillies

The Phillies most noticeably lost bullpen arms. Jeff Hoffman who developed into quite a good end of game arm the couple years they had him and Spencer Turnball who has been a good long reliver.  But they basically swapped the Blue Jays Jordan Romano for Hoffman. If Romero is healthy (he is coming back from surgery but looks good so far) it's close to a push as Romano is also very good.  And for Turnball they brought in old Nats favorite Joe Ross. Overall a slight downgrade on these but just slight. And the pen may be even less important for them in 2025 as they traded for Jesus Luzardo to fill out the rotation which should be an improvement over what they were running in the 5th spot last year, while waiting for top prospect Andrew Painter. 

Offensively they brought in Max Kepler to be one guy in the line-up who doesn't strike out like crazy. The offense was good though, didn't lose anything so unless age gets them (unlikely but possible) they should be good here again. 

Braves 

The Braves lost quite a few pieces. Jorge Soler, who they traded for, and did well for them. Dependable Travis d'Arnuad, disappointing Gio Urshela, and good reliever AJ Minter.  More importantly they let two arms go in Charlie Morton and Max Fried. They remain at least one arm short which is worrisome for a team that has seen their young arms continually get injured. 

The offense is more secure with Jurickson Profar replacing the fading Adam Duvall as good depth. It's a younger offense that didn't perform up to expectations last year, but still managed to be average. 

Mets

Cohen's Boys have been extremely active.,  They haven't technically lost much yet - just Luis Severino but only because so much of their 2025 roster remains unsigned starting with Pete Alonso. They seem to be letting go of good depth Harrison Bader, surprise hitter Jose Iglesias. Solid if old JD Martinez, rotation arm Jose Quintana, and relievers of various goodness Phil Maton, Drew Smith and Adam Ottavino. Whew

But they added JUAN SOTO and Clay Holmes to start maybe and AJ Minter and Frankie Montas and Jesse Winker and Jose Siri to replace Bader's late game D and some other depth pieces.  Whew again. 

For all that they still have rotation depth and relief questions. 

The Phillies should be about the same. Great starting pitching, great offense, and a bullpen that should be good enough to let them run at a mid 90s win total. 

The Braves are seemingly letting it ride with the younger bats turning it back on and carrying the team again. Acuna, Harris, Albies and Olson could (should?) all do a bit better and if they all do the offense takes a big turn positive, enough to probably cover the mishmash of hopes and dreams in the rotation behind Sale. There's real big variance here. 

The Mets should offensively smash teams, and they have enough pitching to hold ground on the mound though depth could bite them right now. It would be wise of them to complete the team with a SP and RP but with already tons of money in the team and possibly throwing money at Pete Alonso that could be it. It's a playoff team but some smart final moves could make it a WS favorite. 

 

Tough road for the Nats but there is an opening IF things falter for the Braves. If they don't the Nats will have a hard time getting within 10 games of any of these. There's always the Marlins!