Psst ... the Phillies have the easiest path to the World Series. Just don’t tell them.

The first day of Red October felt a lot like Red February.

“Chase it!” infield coach Bobby Dickerson yelled, his Mississippi twang crackling through a mostly empty Citizens Bank Park as a pitcher scrambled off the mound to cover first.

Scattered around the infield under a spring-blue sky were the 30 or so players who either have or are vying for a spot on the Phillies postseason roster. Unlike the last couple of years, those decisions will not need to be made until after the completion of the wild-card round of the playoffs, where Tuesday the Brewers and Mets played the first of a three-game series that will decide which of them travels to Citizens Bank Park for Game 1 of the NL Division Series on Saturday.

In the meantime, the Phillies will try to stay busy. The vibe on Tuesday was Day 1 of pitchers and catchers, with batting practice and a series of remedial drills. Wednesday, it will turn to business, with an intrasquad simulated game complete with umpires, crowd noise, and a prize for the winning team.

The Phillies claim there are two main objectives. One, stave off the timing issues that often plague hitters after an extended layoff. Two, keep players locked into the same competitive mindset that earned them this first-round bye. Both of which make perfect sense.

But there is also a third potential benefit. Whether or not they recognize it, they will not speak of it. The Phillies should be considered the World Series favorites right now. And they should do everything in their power to ignore it.

The odds say otherwise, but only slightly. As of Tuesday, FanDuel had the Dodgers and Phillies in a virtual tie to represent the NL in the World Series, with L.A. at 1.65-to-1 and the Phillies at 1.85-to-1. Those are more-than-fair odds. But I think they underprice one key factor.

There’s little argument that the Dodgers are the best team in the majors on paper. They have the game’s best player in Shohei Ohtani, who may one day win Major League Baseball’s first-ever Quadruple Crown (Triple Crown plus Cy Young). They have two MVP-caliber hitters around him in Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, plus six other hitters who finished the regular season with an above-league-average OPS. That level of firepower outweighs the Phillies’ slight advantage on the pitching side of things, even when you factor in the absence of ——ace Tyler Glasnow and the lack of a clear Game 4 starter.

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Yet, question isn’t who would win an NLCS featuring the Phillies and Dodgers. The question is who will get to the NLCS, and then win it. There, the Phillies have a tantalizing advantage.

I’m going to speak frankly as an objective journalist here. The Brewers and Mets shouldn’t scare anybody. The Braves and Padres should scare everybody. The Phillies will play either the Brewers or the Mets in the NLDS. The Dodgers will play either the Braves or the Padres.

It’s as simple as that. It really is. Everything broke in the Phillies’ favor in the last week of the regular season. To a remarkable degree. Their biggest potential obstacle to the NLCS was eliminated from the playoffs. Their next two biggest obstacles are playing each other in the wild-card round. One of them will be eliminated. One of them will become the Dodgers’ obstacle.

The Diamondbacks — eliminated on the day after the last day of the regular season — were the only team in the field that would have entered the NLDS with a psychological advantage over this battle-hardened Phillies team. Consider what Dave Dombrowski had to say when somebody asked him if last year’s NLCS losses in Games 6 and 7 still linger.

“They’ll linger for the rest of my life,” the Phillies president said.

The Braves? Depleted, but carrying a heck of a vendetta, and a heck of a bullpen, with Phillies kryptonite Reynaldo Lopez to boot. The Phillies didn’t want to mess with that plot line, with or without Chris Sale.

The most likely scenario now is that the Padres beat the Braves and that their remarkable pitching depth enables them to not only survive a five-game series with the Dodgers but make it a coin flip. If that series goes to Game 5, the Dodgers would not have either of their top two starting pitchers (Jack Flaherty, Yoshinobu Yamamoto) available on full rest for Game 1. One of them would be unavailable until Game 3. The Phillies are on the easy side of the bracket, plain and simple.

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I am already prepared for the onslaught of emails accusing me of ensuring the Phillies’ demise. Therein lies the point. The worst thing the Phillies can do right now is look ahead. It is the biggest danger they face this time around. It was not possible to do so in 2021 and 2022. Such is the benefit of playing on wild-card weekend. Such is the benefit of being the underdog.

This time around, they must fight the battle that has slain so many giants throughout the course of baseball history. The foe isn’t pressure so much as it is divided attention. The Phillies’ biggest strength over the last three years has been their ability to remain in the moment. The test of these next few days is whether they can remain there.