The Phillies will run it back in 2024. How will that play in the NL East? Let’s size up the competition.

In 2019, with Dave Dombrowski at the wheel, the Red Sox stuck with a nearly carbon copy of the previous season’s team. One year older, lacking reinforcements, Boston regressed from 108 wins and a World Series title to 84 wins and missing the playoffs.

And Dombrowski learned a lesson.

“I really went out of my way to bring some players back that may not have been as important than free agents, or could’ve made some moves,” he said recently. “I don’t know that I would go to that same extent again because I think a little bit of change [is good].”

» READ MORE: The Phillies have been successful at keeping their starting pitchers healthy. And it remains key to their success in 2024.

Yet here’s Dombrowski, less than two weeks before pitchers and catchers report, reassembling the 2023 Phillies for another kick at the pennant that slipped through their fingers like Nick Foles’ pass to Alshon Jeffery in the 2019 NFC playoffs. (Still too soon?)

Dombrowski is quick to differentiate between now and five years ago, chiefly that those Red Sox won it all and these Phillies coughed up the National League Championship Series at home in Games 6 and 7. The former brings a natural contentment that presumably doesn’t exist within Bryce Harper and the rest of the band.

But Dombrowski also argues that the Phillies aren’t merely “running it back.” He notes that Harper is taking the full plunge at first base after only 36 starts there last year. Johan Rojas, a July call-up, figures to get a longer look in center field and Brandon Marsh in left, which takes Kyle Schwarber’s glove out of circulation. Orion Kerkering’s hellacious slider didn’t reach the majors until September.

“You talk about rolling the same team back,” Dombrowski said. “Really we’re only running the same team back that was maybe there the last couple months of the season. And we didn’t win it all. I think there’s still a great hunger to win this thing.”

All valid points, though none changes that the Phillies’ only major-league roster moves have been taking Aaron Nola off the free-agent market with a seven-year, $172 million contract and adding lefty Kolby Allard, who represents starting rotation depth.

Here’s the thing: Running it back is entirely defensible, at least for one more year, for a team that played to a 100-win pace after June 2 and looked unstoppable through two rounds of the postseason and the first two games of the NLCS with Harper at first, Rojas in center, and Schwarber as the DH.

And it’s not like the balance of power in the NL East has shifted under the Phillies’ firmly planted feet.

» READ MORE: Orion Kerkering will have a big role in the Phillies’ bullpen. Could he wind up being the closer?

In time, the Phillies might have to tussle with the Dodgers, who reacted to winning 100 games and getting swept out of the playoffs by adding the best player in the sport (Shohei Ohtani), a 25-year-old ace from Japan (Yoshinobu Yamamoto), pitchers Tyler Glasnow and James Paxton, and outfielder Teoscar Hernández.

But at least baseball’s Goliath isn’t in the Phillies’ division. Well, unless you think that distinction belongs to the Braves. And as active as they were in trying to gird their regular-season juggernaut against melting like a snowball in October, they were unsuccessful in prying away Nola, their top free-agent target, according to a major league source.

Regardless, the Braves and Phillies were the clear NL East heavyweights before the offseason and still are. It figures to be a two-team race for the crown in a division that is more top-heavy than usual.

Let’s take a spin from Atlanta to New York, and Miami to Washington, to catch up on what we might’ve missed while the Phillies were out of the headlines.

Hello: LHP Chris Sale (trade from the Red Sox), OF Jarred Kelenic (trade from the Mariners), RHP Reynaldo López (free agent), LHP Aaron Bummer (trade from the White Sox), INF Luis Guillorme (free agent), RHP Penn Murfee (free agent), LHP Ray Kerr (trade from the Padres).

Goodbye: OF Eddie Rosario, OF Kevin Pillar, LHP Jared Shuster, INF Vaughn Grissom, INF Nicky Lopez, RHP Collin McHugh, RHP Michael Tonkin, RHP Kirby Yates, RHP Nick Anderson, RHP Jesse Chavez, OF Sam Hilliard, RHP Michael Soroka, RHP Kyle Wright, third base/infield coach Ron Washington.

Outlook: For a six-time defending division champ that retained its top 12 players (based on Baseball Reference’s wins above replacement) from a 104-win team, the Braves’ roster churned like a NutriBullet.

» READ MORE: How the Phillies closed the seven-year, $172 million megadeal with Aaron Nola

In falling to the Phillies for a second straight year in the division series, the Braves ran out of starting pitching. They tried for Nola, but his decision to stay with the Phillies, coupled with the galactically high price for starting pitching, led them to trade for Sale.

The 34-year-old former ace does little to alleviate the Braves’ concerns about rotation health. But Sale is still lethal on lefties, which could help against Harper and Schwarber. López can start or relieve, part of the Braves’ plan to build depth that will help keep Sale and 40-year-old Charlie Morton chucking into October.

Kelenic, a 24-year-old left fielder, didn’t match the prospect hype in Seattle. Will it help to be a supporting character in a lineup loaded with Ronald Acuña Jr., Austin Riley, Matt Olson, Ozzie Albies, Sean Murphy, Michael Harris II, and Marcell Ozuna?

Hello: RHP Luis Severino (free agent), INF Joey Wendle (free agent), OF Harrison Bader (free agent), RHP Adrian Houser (trade from the Brewers), LHP Sean Manaea (free agent), OF Tyrone Taylor (trade from the Brewers), RHP Jorge López (free agent), RHP Adam Ottavino (free agent), Tonkin (free agent), RHP Shintaro Fujinami (free agent), manager Carlos Mendoza.

Goodbye: RHP Carlos Carrasco, DH Daniel Vogelbach, Guillorme, OF Rafael Ortega, RHP John Curtiss, manager Buck Showalter.

Outlook: A year after pairing up $43 million-per-year, Hall of Fame-bound aces, the Mets replaced Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander with ... Severino and Manaea? Really?

» READ MORE: The Phillies’ pursuit of Yoshinobu Yamamoto revealed their challenges in breaking through in Japan

As it turns out, decabillionaire owner Steve Cohen meant it when he said the Mets are recalibrating to contend in 2025. Cohen did make a $325 million offer to Yamamoto, but that had more to do with the righty’s age and upside than a win-in-2024 expectation.

Once Yamamoto spurned the Mets (the Phillies were said to have made a “substantial” 12-year offer, although financial terms aren’t known), new president of baseball operations David Stearns stuck to his plan to make smaller, shorter-term moves. It feels like a bridge year in Queens, with Stearns representing the team’s biggest offseason acquisition.

Indeed, the Mets’ most pressing issue is re-signing homegrown slugger Pete Alonso, who can be a free agent next winter. It’s difficult to see them winning much of anything, now or in the future, without him.

Hello: 1B/LF Trey Mancini (minor league free agent), C Christian Bethancourt (trade from the Guardians), RHP Kaleb Ort (waiver claim), RHP Ryan Jensen (waiver claim), RHP Calvin Faucher (trade from the Rays), INF/OF Vidal Bruján (trade from the Rays).

Goodbye: DH Jorge Soler, Wendle, INF Garrett Hampson, C Jacob Stallings, RHP David Robertson, LHP Matt Moore, 1B Yuli Gurriel.

Outlook: Things were trending upward last season in South Florida, where manager Skip Schumaker and trailblazing GM Kim Ng were building a culture that led to the Marlins’ first playoff appearance in a full season since 2003.

And now?

» READ MORE: The Phillies’ brass have a Johan Rojas question, but they’ve faced a similar dilemma before

Ng is gone, having declined her mutual option for 2024 after owner Bruce Sherman didn’t offer a multiyear contract. The Marlins replaced her with former Rays executive Peter Bendix and haven’t signed a major-league free agent, even though Soler is on the market and ace Sandy Alcántara is out for the season after Tommy John elbow surgery.

But hey, at least the Marlins hired former Phillies manager Gabe Kapler as an assistant general manager.

The Marlins are counting on a stable of young pitchers, led by 20-year-old Eury Pérez, to continue developing. But it seems just as likely that they will eventually trade from that group, with lefties Jesús Luzardo and Braxton Garrett reportedly available this winter.

Hello: LF Joey Gallo (free agent), OF/INF Nick Senzel (free agent), RHP Dylan Floro (free agent).

Goodbye: 1B/OF Dominic Smith, OF Corey Dickerson, RHP Carl Edwards Jr., INF Michael Chavis.

Outlook: Want to see the future of the Nationals? It’ll be on display in spring training, where prized outfield prospects Dylan Crews, Robert Hassell III, and James Wood will be in major-league camp.

» READ MORE: How much will it cost the Phillies to keep Zack Wheeler beyond 2024?

None is expected to make a team that won’t push for a playoff spot. But at least the Nationals are no longer pushovers. They won 71 games last season after going 55-107 in 2022. With Gallo, they added light-tower power, positional versatility, and maybe a chip to cash in for more youth at the trade deadline.

Pitching, after young starters Josiah Gray and MacKenzie Gore, remains a problem. But if shortstop CJ Abrams, catcher Keibert Ruiz, and other emerging players keep improving, the Nationals could be in position a year from now to make more of an offseason splash.