Earlier this month, MLB held its second annual “Rivalry Weekend,” primarily pairing teams with inter-league geographic rivals. The Mets played the Yankees, the Dodgers played the Angels, the Cubs played the White Sox, the Orioles played the Nationals, and so on and so forth. The Mets will likely face the Yankees during every Rivalry Weekend until the end of time, yet one might begin to wonder…are the Yankees actually the Mets’ biggest rivals?
It’s in the spirit of this question that I’ve attempted
to rank all 29 other major league clubs according to the intensity of their rivalry with the Mets, beginning with the most friendly relationships and ending with the most heated. The following countdown is entirely subjective and by no means an exact science, with factors like geographic proximity, postseason history, and regular season competition all playing some role.
Without further ado, here is the list…
TIER 1: Rivalry? We might as well be friends!
29. Mariners
The Mariners are like the New York Mets of baseball, as A-Rod might say.
28. Angels
The historically less successful, lower-payroll, mishap-prone team in a two-franchise city, with some of the best players in recent memory but not much to show for it? The Angels and the Mets are basically cousins from across the country.
TIER 2: A gentleman’s rivalry for a gentleman’s game
27. White Sox
Similar situation to that of the Angels, except comparisons between the Mets and White Sox feel more oriented towards geographic circumstance than team identity.
26. Twins
The Twins took a jab at the Mets after sweeping them at Citi Field in April. That’s about as heated as this match-up has gotten over the years.
25. Guardians
Did the Francisco Lindor trade start any sort of rivalry? Not really.
24. Tigers
The Mets almost played the Tigers in the 2006 World Series…see entry No. 5 for more.
23. Rays
There’s no hint of a rivalry here, but the Rays have to be above the rest of the relatively neutral AL Central because at least one person in the Citi Field stands can reliably be overheard complaining about Tampa Bay and their “analytics” during a given game.
TIER 3: I guess there’s something there
22. Blue Jays
The Mets and Blue Jays swapped enough players in the 2010s that their match-ups were certainly intriguing (though not necessarily heated) since someone seemed to always be facing their former team, whether José Reyes or Noah Syndergaard or R.A. Dickey or Marcus Stroman.
21. Rockies
One of two out-of-divsion National League teams the Mets have never faced in a postseason series. The Rockies lost both their first game and their first home game to the Mets within the span of one week in 1993, but got their revenge by winning the first game at Coors Field in walk-off fashion against the Amazins’ in 1995.
20. Pirates
The Pirates are the other out-of-divsion National League team the Mets have never faced in a postseason series, though the two teams did compete for division titles in the old NL East back in 1973 and 1990.
19. Diamondbacks
The Mets eliminated the Diamondbacks in their first-ever postseason series in 1999, but Arizona quickly got over that defeat with a World Series title two years later.
18. Padres
A rivalry that briefly sizzled when Buck Showalter approached a shiny-eared Joe Musgrove. If the Mets and Padres were to meet in another postseason series sometime soon, especially with Juan Soto facing his ex-teammates, this one could move up the list.
17. Rangers
Between Brandon Nimmo and Jacob deGrom (and Kumar Rocker?), the Rangers have a healthy collection of former Mets. That’s sure to make things somewhat intriguing for at least the next several years.
TIER 4: Memories of a Fall Classic
16. Royals
Even as they were ripping apart the Mets’ championship hopes with speed, defense, and an unhittable bullpen, it was difficult to root too hard against the scrappy 2015 Royals.
15. Athletics
The A’s ended the 82-win 1973 Mets’ incredible run to the World Series, though the Amazins’ put up a valiant seven-game fight.
14. Orioles
“They can take our Polar Bear, but they still can’t hit Jerry Koosman” – some nostalgic Mets fan, moments before their mind dissolves into a psychedelic dream-state with indiscernible technicolor images flashing by. Ron Swoboda parallel to the ground in mid-air. Don Buford running out of room at the fence. Gil Hodges holding a shoe-polished baseball in front of the home plate umpire. Cleon Jones kneeling in the outfield. “Those were the days” – that Mets fan, probably.
TIER 5: Things can get tense
13. Astros
It seems like these days every team’s fanbase fashions themselves something of a rival to the Astros, but this ranking is more a result of the tense 1986 NLCS, which concluded with two marathon extra-inning games. Speaking of 1986…
12. Red Sox
The enemy of my enemy is my 13th-biggest rival — at least according to this placement, anyway. The Fenway Faithful might not be so kind-hearted after the 1986 World Series, but I still believe Mets fans primarily feel a strange kinship with the staunchest anti-Yankee fanbase. Though they’re still a team from Boston, this is about as friendly as a New York-Boston relationship can get.
11. Brewers
Until 2024, the Brewers would have been ranked back in Tier 3 with the Rockies, Pirates, D-backs, and Padres. Things began to change when David Stearns made the switch from Milwaukee to New York. On Opening Day 2024 — the first game of Stearns’ tenure — the Brewers were promptly involved in a benches-clearing incident at Citi Field, and on the Crew’s last day of the 2024 season, Pete Alonso hit a backbreaking home run to eliminate them from postseason contention with two outs left to go before sealing the Wild Card Series.
10. Giants
The orange in the Mets’ color scheme and the inspiration behind their “NY” cap logo, the Giants are barely hated in their old home of New York. Sure, the Mets eliminated them in 2000 and got eliminated by them in 2016, but there’s been no prolonged period of drama. Still, the New York history makes these franchises natural competitors for the same reason it makes them natural allies.
TIER 6: Bad Blood
9. Reds
If a franchise’s all-time WAR leader punches Bud Harrelson, they can’t be listed any lower than this. Punching Bud Harrelson is an automatic trip to Tier 6.
8. Cubs
Between the wild Black Cat division chase in 1969 and the NLCS sweep in 2015, the Mets have upended the Cubs in some pretty pivotal moments over the years.
7. Nationals
Ah, the 2010s. A decade when the Mets seemed to get their lunch money stolen by the Nationals every year…except for 2015, when they pulled off memorable win after memorable win against Washington to win the NL East. Even in 2019, a year when neither team won the division, each managed to pull off an absurd comeback against the other down the stretch. Whether it was Yoenis Céspedes and Lucas Duda mashing in 2015 or Daniel Murphy and Bryce Harper treating Citi Field like Coors Field in the following years, the Nats and Mets certainly know how to make fools of one another.
6. Marlins
Roses are red, violets are blue, the Marlins will win in Game 162. Three legendary Mets collapses — 2007, 2008, and 2025 — each made complete with a devastating loss to the Fish on the final day of the regular season. The Mets may have bigger rivals, but no one has been a bigger crimp in their plans.
5. Cardinals
This pair of superteams battled in the NL East during the mid-1980s, with the Cardinals outpacing the Mets by three games in both 1985 and 1987. But the ultimate dagger came two decades later, when the young duo of Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright combined to shock Shea Stadium in Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS. Even 20 years later, I’m not sure Mets fans have come to terms with that night’s events.
TIER 7: All-Out Rivals
4. Dodgers
In some ways, the Mets are more of a brother to the Dodgers than the Yankees. So many elements of their identity trace back to the Brooklyn Dodgers, from Citi Field’s Ebbets-esque design to the Mets’ Dodger-blue primary color to the core tenet that fans will stand proud even while enduring disappointment after disappointment. The Flushing Faithful were born from the Flatbush Faithful. But that brotherly cross-country relationship has grown increasingly fraught over the years as the Mets and Dodgers have faced each other in a number of high-octane postseason series, with L.A. keeping a pair of beloved Mets teams away from the World Series in 1988 and 2024 and the Mets eliminating the Dodgers in the 2006 and 2015 NLDS (the latter intensified by Chase Utley’s hard slide into Ruben Tejada). Throw in the newly-cited mantra of becoming the “East Coast Dodgers,” and the big-budget Mets have practically declared open war on the franchise that once called New York City home.
3. Braves
It takes a special type of rivalry for an opposing team’s star player to name their kid after your team’s stadium. The Mets and Braves have had a contentious relationship since being re-aligned into the same division in 1995, with the Braves winning the first 11 titles in the new NL East as the Mets fought and failed (at least until 2006) to overcome Atlanta’s dynasty. The ferocity of the rivalry was renewed in 2022, when the Braves broke the Mets’ hearts with a late September sweep, eventually matching New York’s 101-win record and earning the tiebreaker to advance to the Division Series. It’s also been well documented that the Braves’ ballparks, whether the old Turner Field or the new Truist Park, have tended to be a house of horrors in both climate and outcome for the Mets.
2. Yankees
There’s just something about New York baseball. Whether it was the Dodgers and Giants battling for pennants or both National League squads attempting to knock off the mighty Yankees in the World Series, the baseball world revolved around New York for the first half of the 20th century (especially in the decade of Willie, Mickey, and the Duke). The Mets and Yankees rivalry is all that remains from that rich history of intra-city competition. It undeniably peaked in 2000 with the first all-New York World Series since 1956, but it proves itself alive and well with every season’s Subway Series games, which manage to produce a playoff atmosphere no matter each team’s respective record. Sure, it’s a one-sided hatred, with more fire and fury coming from the Mets’ side. Sure, it’s interleague play, and most of the games are early-season contests with little larger consequence. Sure, up until the Juan Soto signing the Mets never had a particularly resounding victory over the Bronx Bombers (and even that one played out in a bidding war rather than on the field). But still…there’s just something about New York baseball.
1. Phillies
The only rivalry that seems to regularly produce legitimate loathing between players and fans alike. Tension had been bubbling up for decades, with the Phillies barraging the Mets throughout the late 1970s and the Mets handling the Phillies throughout the 1980s. Then, in the mid-2000s, both teams weren’t just competitive at the same time — they were simultaneously elite. Jimmy Rollins called the Phillies the team to beat in the wake of the Mets’ 2006 division title (kicking off a chain reaction of trash talk) and Philadelphia lived up to the title, stunning the Mets after a late-season collapse in 2007 and edging them out in the NL East en route to a World Series championship in 2008. Plus, from Dwight Gooden to Hansel Robles (twice) to Rhys Hoskins to José Alvarado, this match-up has seen its fair share of bad blood over the years. In the words of David Wright: “I love the rivalry. I don’t necessarily love the city or the people. Or the players.”
