Games are only truly meaningless if the teams playing acknowledge they are meaningless.
To see the roar and chest pounding from Francisco Lindor, and to see the joy from Jefry Yan, who somehow ended up on all fours on the grass, where he slapped the field in celebration, reiterated that the Mets front office admitted defeat on the season at the trade deadline but the clubhouse did not.
Lindor helped save a feel-good, if not exactly consequential, game with one of the prettier plays a defender can make in a 3-2, 10-inning walk-off victory over the majors-best Brewers at Citi Field in front of 28,942 who were not thinking about draft positioning.
The Mets sealed the game in the 10th when Christopher Morel did well to make contact with the bases loaded and third baseman David Hamilton threw wild to home plate, enabling Lindor — who else? — to score the game-winner. But the best drama occurred an inning earlier.
Austin Warren — pitching in place of fill-in closer Kodai Senga, who had thrown Saturday and Sunday — blew a one-run lead in the ninth after allowing a game-tying RBI double to Christian Yelich. Yan entered a second-and-third-with-one-out jam, struck out Garrett Mitchell and walked Joey Ortiz.
With the bases loaded, two outs and the game in the balance, Hamilton volleyed what sure looked like a go-ahead hit that would find grass in left field.
But Lindor — who has struggled defensively — covered plenty of ground, left his feet and went full extension on a dive to catch a ball and save a game.
He instantly rose and screamed toward the crowd, and Yan also was predictably demonstrative for a Mets team (60-72) for which much can be said, but it cannot be said that they have quit.
For the first eight innings, the Mets received their only scoring from solo shots by Lindor and a red-hot Luis Robert Jr., and saw promising signs from a few pitchers trying to prove they belong in the 2027 mix, beginning with Zac Thornton.
Eighteen pitchers in Mets history have concluded their first 10 major league starts with a sub-3.00 ERA.
There have been rocket ships such as Tom Seaver (2.64), Nolan Ryan (2.80) and Matt Harvey (2.73). There is at least the making of a promising arm in Nolan McLean (2.16).
There have been footnotes such as Masato Yoshii (2.25) and Charlie Puleo (2.94).
And now there is a curiosity who might be turning into something more because through his first 10 major league starts, Thornton’s ERA is 2.88.
He held down the Brewers — who entered as the fourth-highest-scoring offense in the sport — for six innings in which he allowed just one run.
Thornton maxed out at 95.4 mph, relied heavily on a cutter that lived in the upper 80s and mixed in seven distinct pitches, six of which induced at least one swing-and-miss.
And apart from a run scored on soft contact in the fourth inning, the Brewers did not have an answer for the kitchen sink.
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Virtually no one has since Thornton debuted with a four-run, 4 ¹/₃ inning clunker in Washington, which is the last time he has allowed four earned runs in a game.
Following Thornton was Nate Lavender, who pitched a clean seventh and eighth to make it 9 ²/₃ innings of scoreless, one-hit ball to begin his career.
