The Braves are clearly in their own heads. Can the Phillies keep them there in a must-win Game 1?

ATLANTA — The sun had already dipped below the office buildings surrounding Truist Park by the time the Braves took the field for their final pre-NLDS workout on Friday evening. The Phillies had wrapped up their own session 60 minutes earlier, a customary time for a visiting team that is scheduled to take batting practice in roughly the same time slot on game day. By contrast, the first Braves hitter did not step into the cage around home plate until the stadium lights were on and first pitch of Game 1 was less than 24 hours away.

A big thing? Perhaps not.

A telling thing? No doubt.

There are two potential conclusions. The Phillies are about to play a best-of-five series against a Braves team that is doing everything it can possibly do to avoid the rust that plagued it in last year’s stunning loss. Or, the Phillies are about to play a best-of-five series against a Braves team that is helplessly trapped inside its own head.

One of those things is definitely true. Both of them might be. We’ll begin the process of finding out at 6 p.m. Saturday.

Frankly, the process may not last much longer than that. For the Braves, this is as close to a must-win as a Game 1 gets. There are a number of reasons for that. Chief among them is the amount of energy the Braves have already expended while attempting to avoid another disappointment.

The last six days have been an interesting stretch here at Truist Park. Apparently, the Braves’ big takeaway from last year’s loss was that it was as much a product of rust as it was the red-hatted buzz saw they encountered. Facing another wild-card bye and weeklong layoff this season, Atlanta manager Brian Snitker wanted to find a way to preserve some of the buzz that had animated the Braves throughout their historic regular season run. So he didn’t just schedule a series of simulated games for his team. He took the novel step of opening up the gates and inviting fans in to watch.

“Last year was the first time anybody really ever experienced that,” Snitker said Friday. “And we thought we did the best we could. But now looking back, this was really good what we did [this year]. We had seven innings all three days. The guys, it was good for them, and the way they performed showed that.”

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It’s an interesting strategy, and Snitker has certainly earned the benefit of the doubt during his eight seasons at the helm. He’s a good dude and an excellent manager. If the Braves end up winning this thing, he’ll have every right to lean back and bask as his pregame preparations get blown way out of proportion.

At the same time, you can’t help but wonder. The standard operating procedure in sports psychology is to treat previous disappointments as if they are barely remembered. One game at a time. We’re onto Cincinnati. I’m not here to talk about the past. The Bill Belichick/Mark McGwire mixtape. We hate the clichés, but there is a darn good reason they are uttered so often that they become clichés.

Fact is, there’s a thin line between learning from the past and dwelling on it. This series could well be decided by which side of that line the Braves spend most of their time on. The Phillies are clearly still an anchor in the middle of Atlanta’s lived experience. Is it an anchor that centers them or wears them down?

This is why Game 1 is so important. The preponderance of the pressure remains squarely where it was last year at this time. The Phillies may have spent last postseason turning themselves into baseball’s darlings, but the calendar has turned, and the Braves are this year’s story. They have one of the greatest offenses of the post-steroid era. They will be starting a pitcher who is heralded as having some of the most unhittable stuff in the majors. Most important: They have a chance to maintain their home-field advantage.

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Lose Game 1, and the edge is gone. The Phillies will have an electric Zack Wheeler on the mound in Game 2 against a starter in Max Fried who finished the regular season on the injured list with a finger blister. In Game 3, the Braves have little choice but to feed Bryce Elder to the Citizens Bank Park wolves. Elder is a solid but unspectacular 24-year-old who has a 5.75 ERA in his last 12 starts and who gave up four runs in 3⅓ innings against the Phillies less than two weeks ago. The Phillies will be starting Aaron Nola.

That’s a heck of an onus hanging over the Braves. They are up against a Phillies team that looks and sounds and feels exactly as it did a year ago. Granted, energy can change quickly. The Phillies deserve to be underdogs in this series because the Braves are that good. Those who underestimate the potential of the Atlanta lineup will quickly find themselves on the wrong side of a crooked number. Psyches change fast once the leaves start to fall.

That said, the Phillies will enter this series with a clear edge in the head-shrinking department. You heard it from Rob Thomson on Friday.

“I think you stay with your strengths,” the Phillies’ fabulously steady manager said before his team’s workout at Truist Park. “I was telling my wife, because she was asking me, ‘OK, what’s your message going to be to the team?’ I said, ‘Good coaches, managers, they have to know when to step in, and they have to know when to kind of get out of the way and let people go play and let coaches go coach.’”

The formula worked last year. The Braves are making a conscious effort to break the spell. To whose benefit, it remains to be seen.