Luis Severinos grit delivered everything Mets need and more

MILWAUKEE — In many ways, Luis Severino on Tuesday night was the Mets season to date.It went horribly at the outset, but there was a relentlessness not to surrender.No, wait.

There was more than that.There was a will and skill to do more than survive.Thus on Tuesday, Severino began awful and ended great — kind of like a team we all know.

It is a Met-aphor for these times.Because the Mets had a bucketful of excuses at the ready to roll over in this opener: from a hellacious travel schedule to the exhaustion of nine of the most thrilling, sapping innings in their history Monday … followed by another nine innings … followed by a cigar and champagne celebration … followed by yet another plane flight that continued their 10-day ping-pong between Atlanta and Milwaukee.But rather than a concession speech, the Mets furthered their mission statement — that you can wobble them, but not knock them out — and beware their counterpunch.“We didn’t see Monday as the end all, be all,” Brandon Nimmo said of getting into the playoffs.“And even after this, it wasn’t like we had an over-the-top celebration.”The “this” was falling behind the Brewers 2-0 in the first and then pulling ahead 3-2 in the second.

Then falling behind 4-3 in the fourth and zooming ahead 8-4 in the fifth — a score that would be the final.Like in Game 1 in Atlanta on Monday, the offensive surge was done via a hail of timely, ferocious at-bats up and down the lineup.And it was accomplished this time because Severino teetered and teetered through four innings, but simply outlasted his Milwaukee counterpart, Freddy Peralta — and then gave two more innings that even he did not expect.“He understood the mission,” Francisco Lindor said.That was to get outs, as many as possible, to protect an overtaxed bullpen and rest it for what is ahead.

Severino thought he was done after four innings, four runs and 79 pitches.But Mendoza recognized the value of every out in the short and lon...