The NL East race grew more fascinating Wednesday as the Mets and the Phillies played a game of “any relief pitcher you can get, we can do better.”

The Mets landed Tyler Rogers, the Phillies countered with Jhoan Duran, and the Mets fired back with Ryan Helsley. And in many ways, it also was a mano a mano of David Stearns and his new-school baseball operations philosophies versus the old-school tactics of the Phillies’ Dave Dombrowski.

All that is at stake for who got it right is the NL East title — and perhaps more.

Steve Cohen hired Stearns for his big-picture discipline so that he might turn the Mets into serial championship contenders. And even with a strong club in a heated race in a huge market for a franchise title-less since 1986, Stearns was willing to give up plenty of supplementary depth to upgrade the pen with lefty Gregory Soto and now Rogers and Helsley.