The Phillies and Mets had different approaches at the trade deadline. Whose moves will be enough?

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Save the dates. Jot them down. Set a calendar reminder.

Aug. 25-27 in New York.
Sept. 8-11 in Philly.

Got it? Good. Because — stop the presses! — the Phillies and Mets are actually duking it out over the National League East crown. For real. They’re toe-to-toe, like Ali and Frazier; nose-to-nose, like Harper and Manfred.

Fifty-four games to go in the regular season. Seven head-to-head matchups.

It. Is. On.

Pardon the (over-)exuberance, but this happens, well, almost never. The Phillies and Mets have coexisted for 64 seasons, all in the same division, and finished first and second a total of … checks notes … four times.

That’s it. And they weren’t all like 2007 either, when the Phillies ran down the Mets and passed them on the last day of the season. In 1986 and 2006, the Mets shifted into cruise control to take the NL East by 21½ and 12 games, respectively, over the Phillies.

It will be much closer this time. Consider: They have been within two games of one another in the standings every day since June 15, passing the division lead back and forth like a hot potato.

The stage is set for a photo finish — against the backdrop of five days last October. The Mets, who didn’t even make the playoffs until the season’s final day, took out the NL East champion Phillies in four games in the divisional round in the rivals’ first postseason meeting ever.

It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that Phillies-Mets is finally at a boil. For one thing, the teams are owned by hyper-competitive billionaires who pour money into the roster. John Middleton has pushed the Phillies’ payroll to a projected $307 million for luxury-tax purposes; Steve Cohen has the Mets at an estimated $340 million.

Middleton and Cohen trust the baseball decisions to shrewd executives. Dave Dombrowski and David Stearns are a generation apart in age and team-building philosophy. But neither has assembled a losing team over a full season since 2016.

And both lineups overflow with comparable stars: Bryce Harper, Trea Turner, and Kyle Schwarber for the Phillies; Juan Soto, Francisco Lindor, and Pete Alonso for the Mets.

Still, as the trade deadline arrived this week, the Phillies and Mets also looked strikingly similar in terms of their biggest weaknesses — bullpen and outfield; outfield and bullpen — and the players they pursued.

“There were a lot of similarity of our needs,” Dombrowski said. “It’s one of those that, you’re very aware of what they’re doing.”

Indeed, for about three hours Wednesday evening, it seemed the Phillies and Mets were one-upping each other in trading for relievers. The Mets snagged Tyler Rogers from the Giants before the Phillies reeled in Jhoan Duran from the Twins, and the Mets responded by prying Ryan Helsley from the Cardinals.

Then, in the hours leading to the deadline Thursday, both teams picked up veteran center fielders. After the Phillies grabbed Harrison Bader (a former Met, by the way) from the Twins, the Mets landed Cedric Mullins from the Orioles.

And, now, it’s a two-month sprint for the NL East title.

But before the Phillies and Mets settle it on the field, it’s worth examining the contrasts in how Dombrowski and Stearns filled their roster’s holes, why they took different approaches, and whether it will prove to be enough.

Striking a balance

On Wednesday and Thursday, the last two days before the deadline, there were a total of 50 trades involving more than 100 players. But only three top-100 prospects changed teams.

Guess who traded two of them.

Most modern front offices protect prospects like they’re the Crown Jewels. Not Dombrowski. When he believes he has a team that can win the World Series, he will usually push a stack of chips into the poker table.

And in getting Duran to anchor the bullpen for a team with a core of thirtysomethings and dominant starting pitching, Dombrowski made a classic Dombrowski trade, giving up catcher Eduardo Tait and right-hander Mick Abel, the Nos. 56 and 91 prospects in the sport, according to MLB Pipeline.

But two things can be true, so let’s say this: Dombrowski actually demonstrated restraint.

When the week began, the Twins initially asked for Andrew Painter in a deal for Duran. That was a non-starter. After refusing to trade the 22-year-old top prospect for ace lefty Garrett Crochet at last year’s deadline, Dombrowski wasn’t moving him in any swap. Not for Duran. Not to the Athletics for Mason Miller. Not for any closer.

The reason?

“Because I think he’s really good,” Dombrowski said. “It’s really what it comes down to. I think he’s a premier starting pitcher. That’s what he projects to be.”

Say this, then: The Phillies acquired a 27-year-old closer with a 100-mph fastball and two more years of team control by giving up two top-100 prospects but none of their three best (Painter, shortstop Aidan Miller, center fielder Justin Crawford).

If Dombrowski had really stayed true to his reputation and gone entirely all-in, maybe the Phillies would’ve coughed up Aidan Miller or Crawford to pry Steven Kwan away from Cleveland. But Kwan was the best controllable outfielder on the market and wound up not getting traded.

Surely, the Phillies weren’t yielding Miller or Crawford for two guaranteed months of Luis Robert Jr., who stayed with the White Sox, or Eugenio Suárez, an imperfect positional fit whose addition would’ve pushed Harper or Schwarber to left field.

They wound up with Bader, an exceptional defender and average hitter who’s having a better season at the plate than Phillies officials expected. Maybe it’s an incremental upgrade. But as Dombrowski reiterated, “Our offensive improvements are going to have to come internally.”

The Phillies made one other pre-deadline move to fix a bullpen that Dombrowski wasn’t aggressive enough in building in the offseason — and all it cost was Middleton’s money. They outbid other contenders, including the Mets, for free agent David Robertson.

Robertson, expected to join the Phillies next week after building arm strength in triple A, signed a prorated $16 million contract that will pay him roughly $6 million. The Phillies will pay an additional $6.5 million as a luxury-tax penalty for being above the highest threshold.

“That’s what’s great when you have an owner like John Middleton,” Dombrowski said. “He says, ‘Let’s go ahead and spend the cash and get that done rather than moving some of our prospects for somebody.”

Renting a bullpen

Cohen would surely appreciate that. But although the wealthiest owner in baseball outspends almost all of his peers, he hired Stearns to build a sustainable contender — the East Coast Dodgers, in Cohen’s imagination.

Stearns’ philosophy, shaped by his roots as the general manager with the small-market Brewers, is to hoard prospects and build from within. There was no chance, then, that he was going to fix the Mets’ bullpen by giving up anyone from among infielder Jett Williams, outfielder Carson Benge, or pitchers Nolan McLean, Jonah Tong, or Brandon Sproat.

It helped, too, that the Mets already had a closer to handle the ninth inning. So, rather than chasing Duran and Mason Miller, the controllable flamethrowers at the top of the market, and pairing them with Edwin Díaz, Stearns took a different tack.

The Mets went hard after reliever rentals. Rogers, a submarining righty whose fastball rarely cracks 85 mph, became available early in the week when the Giants shifted from buying to selling; Helsley, a closer with triple-digit heat, was widely expected to move.

And because Rogers and Helsley are in their walk years, the Mets dealt mostly second- and third-tier prospects, notably righty Blade Tidwell and outfielder Drew Gilbert (for Rogers) and infielder Jesus Baez (for Helsley).

The Mets also picked up former Phillies lefty Gregory Soto in a pre-deadline move. They will add Soto, Helsley, and Rogers to closer Edwin Díaz at the end of the game, while sliding Ryne Stanek, Reed Garrett, and lefty Brooks Raley into the middle innings.

Like the Phillies, the Mets’ focused on the outfield in the final hours before the deadline. Once again, they went the rental route, acquiring Cedric Mullins from the Orioles for three minor leaguers, none of whom were ranked among the top 20 in their organization by Baseball America.

Interestingly, the Mets’ move for Mullins came after the Phillies scooped up Bader.

“It was more a matter that, you’re keeping track of it to see, if they acquire somebody, then you know they’re not in that particular [market],” Dombrowski said. “You know they’re going for a center fielder. I had a pulse of the guys that might be available that would fit into that category and kind of knew that if we jumped in ahead of them, well, they’re not going to get that player.

“But I don’t think we made any moves — in fact, I’m sure we didn’t make any moves — to prevent them from doing something. It was more because that’s what our specific need was and we like the players that we got, first and foremost to help our club.”

If the Mets had a deadline regret, it was that they didn’t add to their starting rotation. But the starting pitching market was unusually inactive, with Joe Ryan (Twins), Mitch Keller (Pirates), Sandy Alcantara (Marlins), MacKenzie Gore (Nationals), and Zac Gallen (Diamondbacks) staying put.

“There are multiple ways to build a pitching staff and we focused on the bullpen,” Stearns told reporters in New York. “We were really happy with the arms we were able to acquire that are going to pitch out of our pen.”

Said Harper: “[Helsley’s] a stud. Rogers, as well. He’s got a sub-2.00 [ERA], I think his whole career, so he’s really good. And you’ve got Díaz on the back end of that as well. They’re good. They’re going to be a big matchup for us down the stretch.”

Get ready to rumble.