For Fox Sports, Dayn Perry breaks down the best rivalries in baseball. His top four in order are: Red Sox-Yankees, Dodgers-Giants, Cardinals-Cubs and Mets-Phillies.

For the Mets-Phillies, he writes:

Here’s the most ascendant rivalry in the game right now. You’ve got all the ingredients for hatred: proximity, same division, a healthy percentage of sub-moron fans on both sides, and a recent history of beery indiscretions.

What’s held this one back is that fact that rarely have the Mets and Phillies been worth a crap at the same time. Now, however, there’s actually something at stake. Throw last year’s white-knuckled race and this winter’s smack-talking into the mix, and you’ve got quite the nifty rivalry. Sure, it lacks the veneer of age that the match-ups above have, but the intensity and importance are there.

At this point, we could hand out a few consolation prizes, but that would be abandoning our standards for great rivalries. So four — and only four — it is. Miffed that your team doesn’t have a spot on the list? Start punching opposing fans more often.

This is really starting to irk me. It frustrates me how short-sighted people are being about rivalries, and granted I cannot tell anybody how much they hate a team, or who they root against the hardest. Yet, the Braves-Mets rivalry has been going on longer. It has been competitive for longer. It is also classy. I want to smack the hell out of them when I play them, but as an organization and a team, I really respect the Braves, they are a class act. The Phillies on the other hand came out and have been trying to artificially create a rivalry because they don’t have one, and they are dragging us into it. They came out, made a cocky guarantee (that unfortunately turned out to be true) and now all of a sudden they are our biggest rivals? No, they are a third wheel that is desperately looking for a date but they can’t find one. So, they ask somebody who already has a significant other, and try to weasel their way into a date. Don’t fall for it, we rival the Braves people!

In an article for SI.com Jon Heyman discusses the trash talk between Carlos Beltran and Jimmy Rollins. 

He writes:

Beltran gave it a shot. But under the circumstances his words came off as a pale impersonation of the master [Jimmy Rollins].

For more insight on rivalries, at Metsblog Matt Cerrone asks readers, “Who do you consider the Mets biggest rival?”

As of 3:45 today, the Phillies lead voting at 46%, while the Braves trail closely at 42% and the Yankees trail in the dust at 7%.

While recent chatter has certainly made things more interesting, I certainly see the Braves as our biggest rival today.  As I wrote in this week’s Beaton’s Banter, I really just see the Phillies as a 3rd wheel that is trying to provoke the Mets into paying attention to them.  The Mets rivalry has always been bitter and intense, while classy.  The Phillies and Mets have finally become decent at the same time for the past few years, so naturally there has been some tension and aggression.  But nothing is like Chipper Jones naming his kid, “Shea”, or when June 29, 2000 became the unofficial Throw Batteries at John Rocker Day.