Francisco Lindor has chance to quickly change everything for Mets

He has done everything, been everything, for the Mets for five months. The Mets were gasping the final Monday of the season, he hit a two-run, ninth-inning homer as close to CPR as the sport allows. The Mets abandoned runner after runner on the bases with a chance to chase the Phillies on Wednesday; he cleared those bases with another forever swing.

Forget whether Francisco Lindor merits the National League’s Most Valuable Player award, he’s been the Mets’ most valuable player. That goes without saying.

Done everything, been everything.

So it almost seems like an unfair ask to present him what the Mets need from him now. It almost feels greedy. Baseball games in real life aren’t the same as baseball games in the movies, even if Lindor and friends have done their best the past few weeks to rebut that postulate. You can’t just script these things.

But let’s script it anyway.

Because the Mets really need Lindor to give them a quick spark Monday afternoon, Game 2 of the National League Championship Series at Dodger Stadium. After the 9-0 drubbing the Dodgers laid on them Sunday, they require an immediate infusion of life.

“We need to be better,” Carlos Mendoza said when the carnage was complete. “We need to be much better.”

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Lindor will not only be the likeliest candidate to make that happen, he’ll also be the Mets’ first option when he leads the game off against whichever reliever of choice Dave Roberts sends out to start L.A.’s bullpen game.

The Dodgers have a string of 33 consecutive zeroes dangling on a clothesline across Dodger Stadium. One more and they’ll break a postseason tie with the 1966 Orioles, who did that against — since baseball can’t help itself, it’s so addicted to symmetry and historical callbacks — the Dodgers.

It would behoove the Mets not to let that streak reach 34. It would very much be in their best interests to jump the Dodgers, not let the beautiful people inside Dodger Stadium clear their throats and pretend to be a real baseball crowd. The Mets need to be ready with a counter. They need to be ready to answer.

And Lindor must provide the answer. Quick. It’s on his bat. It is, as ever, on his shoulders.

“This,” he said wearily late Sunday night, “was one of those days.”

Monday needs to be one of these days: A day when Lindor announces: “This is a new day. This is a new game. Now follow me, boys.”

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You know. Like he’s done just about every day since June 1.

“We were all ready,” Lindor said. “Bottom line comes down to: We didn’t play the game better than they did.”

Lindor can see to it that they will. Sean Manaea will be his running mate in this effort, sure. The Mets need Manaea to pitch as he pitched so often in the season’s last two months, to look as he looked Tuesday in Game 3 against the Phillies, when he was seven innings worth of stubborn brilliance in a 7-2 win.

But it’s Lindor who’ll have the chance to tell Los Angeles to simmer down. And look: We’re not crazy enough — even with the game taking place only nine miles from the “HOLLYWOOD” sign — to say Lindor has to smack a leadoff home run.

(Although, sure, that’s what Lenny Dykstra did in 1986, Game 3 of the World Series, another time when it looked like a Mets team graced by grace had used up their full quota of pixie dust. And, sure, that’s what Derek Jeter did leading off Game 4 of the 2000 World Series, sending a message with one swing that the Mets weren’t going to finagle their way back into the series.)

No. We won’t go that far.

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But we’ll go this far:

Lindor has to set the mood. Lindor has to set the tone. Yes: It was only one game, even if it was the worst game the Mets have played in months. History is littered with best-of-seven series in which the team that lost the opener came back to win the series. The Mets came to Los Angeles looking for a split. They can still get a split.

But these things can fester. These things can grow. The Dodgers already have to feel like they could shut out the ’27 Yankees if they had to. Thirty-three straight scoreless — the first 24 against the hard-hitting Padres, the last nine against the clutch-hitting Mets — tends to make you feel bulletproof.

Lindor can change that. He can scratch out a hit. He can draw a walk. Hell, he can simply put together one of those uber-professional at-bats that have been as much a part of his game the last few weeks as the homers. Sunday the Mets looked like they barely belonged on the same field as L.A.: offense, defense, Jesse Winker’s brain cramp on the base paths.

Jack Flaherty was terrific.

“My hat’s off to him,” Lindor said.

But there is still an opportunity Monday. Still a chance to split. Still a chance to counter. It starts with Lindor, because everything good the last few weeks has started with Lindor. Why should it be different now?

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