PHILADELPHIA — Remember the “Find the Snow Leopard” picture that made the rounds on the internet a while back? The next time you look at it, check to see if the top half of the Phillies batting order is hidden there, too. They’ve officially gone missing. And they’ve taken the Red October magic with them.

There was a lot of second-guessing taking place in the wake of the Phillies’ 5-3 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 1 of the NLDS on Saturday. Leaving Cristopher Sánchez in too long. Taking him out too early. Trusting in David Robertson. None of it mattered as much as the thing that made those decisions so detrimental.

Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber, and Bryce Harper went 1 for 11 with six strikeouts.

Start your analysis there.

“I thought we missed some pitches over the plate, pitches we’ve done damage on,” Harper said. “We just didn’t get it done.”

That’s really all there is to it. You shouldn’t need a tip line to find the guys with the biggest paychecks. If that sounds harsh, it’s because it is. Reality feels that way sometimes.

The difference in Game 1 was a three-run home run by the Dodgers’ three-hole hitter. Teoscar Hernández’s seventh-inning shot off Matt Strahm was the kind of moment that used to happen for the good guys at Citizens Bank Park. That hasn’t been the case since Game 5 of the 2023 National League Championship Series. Since then, the Phillies have lost six of seven playoff games, four of them at home. They’ve scored more than three runs once during that stretch. It happened in the one game they won (Game 2 of last year’s NLDS against the Mets).

The numbers during that stretch:

— Schwarber, 3 for 25, 12 strikeouts, five walks, two extra-base hits, one home run.

— Harper, 5 for 23, 10 strikeouts, six walks, three extra-base hits, one home run.

— Turner, 3 for 26, 7 strikeouts, three walks, no extra-base hits.

The Phillies aren’t going to win many games in stretches where that trio goes 11 for 74.

The bullpen is a problem, sure. We saw that on Saturday night just as we did in the 2023 NLCS loss to the Diamondbacks, when the Phillies dropped Games 6 and 7 at home. But the Phillies are supposed to have the antidote for a substandard bullpen. Great starting pitching and lots of runs.

They got only one of those on Saturday night.

With one out and runners on first and second in the fifth inning, Turner lined out and Schwarber struck out and the Phillies came up empty. In the eighth, with the Phillies trailing by two runs, Schwarber struck out with Turner on base. Harper followed with a single to help set up a two-out, bases loaded situation with Edmundo Sosa pinch-hitting for Brandon Marsh. Whether Sosa or Harrison Bader, they aren’t the ones the Phillies are supposed to be asking to provide the heroic moments.

“Me, personally, I have to do a better job with runners in scoring position,” Schwarber said. “Got to do a better job of either making contact early or being able to spoil something late. We’ve said before, this is a series, and we have to be able to learn and move on to the next game.”

The Phillies’ last seven postseason games have dealt a serious blow to their once invincible October aura. In the six losses, they’ve scored a total of 11 runs. The three runs they scored on Saturday night were more than they’d scored in any of the five previous losses. And they needed some shoddy fielding to do it, with Hernández looking like he was being controlled by a dropped video game remote while attempting to cut off J.T. Realmuto’s two-run triple to the gap in right-center.

Is it fair to pin everything on Turner, Schwarber, and Harper? I guess it all depends on how you define the word. Is it fair to measure a player against the standard he has set for himself?

All three played a big role in making Red October what it once was. A seven-game stretch doesn’t overshadow what each of them accomplished during the last two regular seasons. But the numbers are the numbers. At one point in 2023, the Phillies had won 12 of their last 14 postseason games at Citizens Bank Park. Since then, they’ve lost four of five.

They didn’t lose those games because of the crowd. It was as loud on Saturday as it was in the previous Game 1s the Phillies have hosted. It sure seemed to impact Shohei Ohtani, who struck out four times and allowed the Phillies to take a 3-0 lead in the second.

“It kind of felt like I was at a concert but sober, so I was very sensitive to all the noise and vibration,” said Bader, who experienced Citizens Bank Park last October as a member of the Mets. “It’s almost deafening. I think when you’re on the other side of it, you find ways to minimize it and blank it out. But as a home player, you use it as fuel and you kind of breathe it in. It’s just a really cool experience, honestly.”

But energy is a volatile entity. It can’t survive long on zeros.

They will get another chance on Monday. It goes without saying that the Phillies must win Game 2 at home. Even with that, they will have little margin for error. Whatever happens on Monday, the series will head to Los Angeles with the Dodgers able to clinch this best-of-five series at home.

Baseball is a difficult sport. A five-game series is a criminally small sample for performance. But the Phillies have previously thrived in that reality. Their big guns need to find a way to summon those friendly ghosts.

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