To the average person, rivalries might not get any better than Hamilton vs. Burr, Holmes vs. Moriarty, The Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones or Star Trek vs. Star Wars.

To which the average baseball fan might retort: "Psh, what are those compared to the best rivalries in Major League Baseball today?"

It is in support of this average fan that we've made a fresh ranking of the seven best rivalries in MLB right now. There's no objective measure for this, so we got subjective in weighing how much drama each rivalry has both on (i.e. parity) and off (i.e. bad blood) the field.

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And when we say "right now," we do mean right now. We'll start by acknowledging some legacy rivalries, but this is about rivalries whose peaks are in the present.

 

Honorable Mentions

Boston Red Sox vs. New York Yankees

This is obviously the O.G. of MLB rivalries, and one with enough history for a 20,000-word entry on Wikipedia.

It is, however, a rivalry that's had its ups and downs over the years. With the Yankees having dominated three of the last four season series and the two clubs not on the same contention level in 2023, it's stuck in one of the latter for now.

 

Los Angeles Dodgers vs. San Francisco Giants

This is baseball's other O.G. rivalry. Red Sox-Yankees and Dodgers-Giants might even be No. 1 and No. 1-A among MLB rivalries, and there's a case that the latter belongs in the first slot.

Yet, the current nature of the Dodgers-Giants rivalry isn't all that different from that of Red Sox-Yankees. Their race in the National League West in 2021 was a doozy, but the Dodgers have generally had the edge since 2017 and the two teams are on different paths this year.

 

Chicago Cubs vs. St. Louis Cardinals

There's history aplenty here, too, and this rivalry might have even been the best in baseball when the Cardinals and Cubs were jockeying for position in the National League Central on an annual basis between 2015 and 2020.

But that also feels like forever ago, especially now that the two teams are bringing up the rear in the division.

 

New York Mets vs. Philadelphia Phillies

Remember when the Mets and Phillies were constantly at each other's throats and duking it out for NL East supremacy during the mid-to-late 2000s? Those were some good times.

But this also feels like forever ago. The temperature of this rivalry has been cooler of late, including last year when the Mets easily handled the Phillies to the tune of a 14-5 record.