The Phillies got the playoff bye they wanted. Here’s how they’ll try to stay ready during a five-day layoff.

It seems there are actually worse ways to go into baseball’s playoffs than by getting a bye in the wild-card series.

Funny, isn’t it, how Brian Snitker found that out?

In spring training, the Braves manager reflected on back-to-back upsets by the Phillies in the best-of-five divisional round by citing the difficulty of staying sharp during the wild-card layoff. Specifically, he noted that it’s “hard to hit velocity when you haven’t seen anything in five days.”

» READ MORE: How Kyle Schwarber went from failed leadoff experiment to a unique, record-setting No. 1 hitter

Snitker wasn’t exactly wrong, even if his comments did ring of excuse-making. Baseball is played nearly every day. Players are creatures of routine. Five days off is disruptive. All of that is true.

It’s a safe bet, though, that Snitker would’ve accepted the bye over what the Braves went through Monday: A doubleheader against the Mets — and having to win the second game after dropping the first in dramatic fashion — to merely clinch a playoff spot before jetting from Atlanta to San Diego to open the best-of-three wild-card series Tuesday.

But hey, good luck to the Phillies with those five days off. That’s their problem now.

“I feel like the No. 1 overall thing is, if anyone has any bumps, bruises, whatever it is, this is that time that you get to really take care of it and make sure that we’re going to be fully healthy rolling into Saturday,” Kyle Schwarber said after Sunday’s regular-season finale in Washington. “The last couple years, we didn’t really have that luxury.”

Beyond that, the Phillies have a plan to make sure the extra rest doesn’t cause them to rust before the divisional round begins Saturday against the Brewers or the Mets.

After a day off, they will work out Tuesday and play an intrasquad game Wednesday at Citizens Bank Park. They will hire umpires, turn on the scoreboard, and crank up artificial crowd noise, walk-up music and other ambient sounds to simulate the real thing.

» READ MORE: Will the Phillies leverage their starting pitching advantage in the postseason? Plus, other thoughts before the playoffs begin.

Rob Thomson is even soliciting ideas for potential stakes.

“I think there should be a carrot out there,” the manager said.

Maybe the losers buy dinner for the victors? Or the winning team gets a few bonus bucks thrown in its direction?

“You know how much these guys make?” Thomson said, laughing. “I’m not sure how much money I can put up.”

Fair point. The thing is, the Phillies seem to understand that whatever preparations they make this week will work only if there’s a seriousness of purpose. The Phillies considered staging more than one simulated game, but decided against it.

“I didn’t want to have too many games,” Thomson said, “because eventually they just go, ‘Oh, this is stupid.’”

The Phillies can do as much or as little as they want. They can simulate facing specific Brewers or Mets pitchers with the high-tech Trajekt batting machine, or take regular swings in the cage. But if they don’t fully buy in — and go all-out rather than through the motions — it won’t matter.

“I would just say, even though you’re not playing games, just be locked in on the work that you are doing,” Nick Castellanos said. “Right? Don’t be just so happy-go-lucky and think of these five days as a vacation, per se, rather than some down time. Still remain focused and concentrate on whatever it is that we have scheduled that day.”

Thomson doesn’t wave off concerns about the bye, especially for the hitters. While it won’t be ideal for Zack Wheeler to start Game 1 on six days’ rest, it’s a manageable change to his schedule. Wheeler figures he may throw a lighter bullpen session in addition to this usual one. All in all, he expects to be fine.

» READ MORE: Bryce Harper knows the Phillies’ time is now. But he also believes their window isn’t close to shutting.

It isn’t as simple for hitters to retain their timing without facing live pitching for five days. The Phillies have hitters who are susceptible to swinging at elevated fastballs and at breaking pitches out of the strike zone, a weakness exploited by the Diamondbacks last year in the NLCS.

Could five days off send them back into chase mode?

“I don’t think it’s stupid,” Thomson said of the bye as a storyline this week. “I think there’s a chance you can get stale. That’s why we’re playing the [simulated] game and then making sure that they get velocity in the cages, crank up those machines and do as much as they can to maintain timing.”

A few Phillies players have experienced previous postseason layoffs. In 2019, Trea Turner was with the Nationals when they swept the NL Championship Series and had six days off before the World Series.

“I remember we won the first two games,” Turner said.

Beyond that, Turner doesn’t recall any secret sauce to staying sharp. If anything, he believes it’s mind over matter.

“I think it’s just an excuse if you want it to be, or it’s a good time to rest if you want it to be,” he said. “It’s whatever you want it to be, really. I feel like the adrenaline of the postseason kind of locks you in and makes up for that five days off. You’re not going to feel sluggish or you’re not going to feel like you haven’t played for a long time.

“It’s so different [in the playoffs]. You’re going to play a good, quality team. Everything’s on the line. Guys are going to pitch a little different. Coaches are going to manage a little different. It’s a little bit different game. Once that postseason starts, it’s about competing in that moment. I think we’re ready for it.”

And it’s not like the Phillies will lack motivation. Many players were ticked off by what Snitker said in spring training. It wasn’t that his comments lacked validity. Maybe the Braves really were adversely affected by the layoff last year and in 2022.

In that case, though, the Phillies saw it as the Braves’ problem that shouldn’t detract from how well they played in those series.

What better way to hammer home that point than by doing to another team what the Braves were unable to do to them?

“You’re preparing to play a team who just played a really high-intensity series, and they want it. Right?” Schwarber said. “That’s the biggest thing, making sure that we can keep our intensity level up and keep our focus really sharp.”