Bryce Harper knows the Dodgers (and Mets?) are the new Evil Empire. Frankly, he respects it.

CLEARWATER, Fla. — Bryce Harper’s appreciation for the Dodgers shouldn’t come as a surprise. You’d expect a particular affinity for market domination from a world-famous sports celebrity who decides to become TikTok’s newest clean-eating mega-influencer. The guy has two MVP trophies and 336 career home runs and still gets a thrill from getting 3 million people to watch him make a raw milk latte.

There is something primally capitalistic about that.

You are either a businessman or a business, man. Baseball is better off with more of the latter. That is the official view from Harper, Inc., at least according to its one-man board of governors, who checked into BayCare Ballpark on Saturday, two days before the Phillies hold their first full-squad workout of the spring. The onus isn’t on the Dodgers to limit their spending. It is on the rest of the sport to keep pace.

“I think it’s great for the players,” Harper said Saturday afternoon as he stood in front of his locker and took stock of a National League pennant race that has shifted even further in the West’s favor. “They [players] get to pick where they want to go. If they want to play for the L.A. Dodgers, they are going to play for the L.A. Dodgers. It’s great for the Dodgers.”

It’s not so great for the Phillies. Not on paper, anyway. Three years after they claimed the NL pennant and lost to the Astros in the World Series, the Phillies will enter the season as the league’s fourth favorite at 7.5-to-1. The Dodgers and their remarkable $389 million payroll are near even money (+140) to repeat as champs. In between the Dodgers and Phillies are the Braves (+475) and Mets (+525), the latter of whom lost to the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series after beating the Phillies in the divisional round.

Those odds are a reflection of offseason spending. The Dodgers and Mets added more than $90 million in annual salary to their existing NLCS rosters while retaining several incumbents. At times, the free agent market felt like a two-horse race with the Phillies watching from the grandstand.

The Dodgers signed two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell, highly regarded Japanese free agent right-hander Roki Sasaki, and two of the market’s top closers in Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates at a combined price tag of close to $70 million per year. They also retained middle-of-the-order heavyweight Teoscar Hernández and added outfielder Michael Conforto and young Korean infielder Hyeseong Kim. Keep in mind, the Dodgers already were world champions and widely regarded to have the best roster in baseball before the offseason began.

The Mets are just as daunting. By the end of last year’s NLDS domination of the Phillies, a changing of the guard already was in motion. Then the Mets went out and guaranteed more than a billion dollars in contracts, the bulk of it coming from perennial MVP candidate Juan Soto’s 15-year, $765 million deal. Soto will join a lineup that is almost entirely intact from last season, now that Pete Alonso has re-signed for two years and $54 million. Postseason breakout Sean Manaea is back atop the rotation on a three-year, $75 million deal. He’ll be joined by free-agent signees Clay Holmes and Frankie Montas, who will earn a combined $29.7 million.

“Obviously, the Dodgers have done a great job building that team,” Harper said. “They’ve got depth in all the places they need to have depth in. They’re the Los Angeles Dodgers. You expect them to go out and do those things just like the Yankees did in the 2000s. It’s what kind of team they are. They get guys that defer money and do things the right way. It’s a great team over there. Obviously, the Mets are doing the same thing.”

It would be easy to infer a sense of jealousy from Harper’s comments, who has never been shy about publicly pushing his bosses to boost their spending. John Middleton and Dave Dombrowski have obliged their 32-year-old superstar plenty in his six years with the Phillies.

Three years ago, they were the team that went to the World Series and then signed the offseason’s biggest star. The Phillies’ projected 2025 payroll ranks third behind the Dodgers and Mets at a healthy $308 million (luxury tax included). That’s more than enough money to build a champion. Still, it’s $17 million less than the Mets and $85 million less than the Dodgers (per FanGraphs).

This offseason, the Phillies made it clear that they are in a different income bracket. Instead of splurging on a big-ticket corner outfielder, they gave $10 million to Max Kepler, who has finished three of the last four seasons with an OPS+ below league average. Six teams signed high-leverage relievers to multiyear contracts worth $10 million per season. Two of those relievers were Phillies last season.

The Phillies will replace them with Jordan Romano, who signed a one-year, $9.5 million deal after being nontendered by the Blue Jays. Their biggest-impact move likely will be the acquisition of big-armed lefty Jesús Luzardo from the Marlins. As long as he stays healthy.

“We obviously lost some guys and kind of rounded off the edges, I would say,” Harper said. “I thought we got some pretty good upside guys. If they pitch to their ability or play to their ability, they’re going to be really good for us. We have a really good opportunity. Obviously, we have the guys in this clubhouse to do that. If we just do our job and play the game the right way and play to our ability, we’ll be where we need to be by season’s end.”

They are not the Dodgers. But, then, who is? The bigger question is the gap between the Phillies and the Mets.

“There’s a lot of teams that people are counting out and think they can’t even sniff what the Dodgers are doing or the Mets are doing or ourselves,” Harper said. “I think that’s how baseball works. You have to go out there and play the game understanding that the Dodgers are going to be really good on any given night. You still have to play the game. I thought in 2015, the Nationals were one of the best teams in baseball, especially when we signed Max [Scherzer], and it didn’t go as well as we thought.

“I’m not saying that’s going to happen to the Dodgers or anything else, but you still have to play the game. It’s a funny game we play. You can be the best team in baseball, the hottest team in baseball, and you get to the postseason and fall on your face.”

This offseason, the Phillies got less better than the two teams who were the last standing in the NL last year. The hope is that they have yet to show us how good they already were.