Phillies, Mets, rest of NL East make MLB history that's hard to believe

The Philadelphia Phillies began their season at home against the Texas Rangers, while the New York Mets faced off against the Pittsburgh Pirates and Paul Skenes in New York.

Both teams wound up winning their games. Around the NL East, the Washington Nationals beat the Chicago Cubs in a surprising blowout on Opening Day, leaving only the Atlanta Braves and Miami Marlins to play on Friday for their season openers.

After Friday's slate of games, the entire NL East made some hard-to-believe history. As OptaSTATS shared, for the first time in MLB history, a division, the 2026 NL East, is beginning the season 1-0.

Entire NL East makes hard-to-believe MLB history

"The NL East is the first division in MLB history to have all of its teams start 1-0," OptaSTATS shared on Twitter/x.

The Phillies won 5-3 over the Rangers, the Mets won 11-7 over the Pirates, and the Nationals won 10-4 over the Cubs on Opening Day. Then on Friday, the Marlins beat the Colorado Rockies 2-1, and the Braves beat the Kansas City Royals 6-0.

So, after each team has played one game to begin the year, the entire NL East is now 1-0, becoming the only division in Major League Baseball history to do so.

This is a wild statistic. It's hard to believe that not once has an entire division started 1-0 before. How, in the well over 100 years of MLB history, has there not been a division to begin the year with every team winning its first game?

Well, the answer is a very simple one. Despite how outlandish this statistic sounds on the surface, the history of baseball has routinely featured intra-division matchups to begin the season.

If there's even one series where there's an intra-division matchup to begin the year, that division can't have every team begin the season at 1-0.

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With most of MLB history featuring those intra-division matchups to begin the season, it's not a surprise that the 2026 NL East is the first division to accomplish this feat.

There's only one chance per-season to accomplish this feat, and for most of MLB history, playing teams from the opposing division wasn't very common.

This might seem like a ridiculous piece of history on the surface, but in reality, it's an incredibly rare occurrence for every team in a division to begin the year playing outside of their division.

This history might be matched in the future as more games are played outside of the division to begin the season, like what's happened with the NL East this season.

It's a fun piece of history that initially is hard to believe, but it makes a lot of sense considering how MLB history has gone with intra-division play.

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