They made it interesting, of course, because the Mets always seem to make things interesting. They were about to meekly retire from the ninth inning before deciding to throw a powerful scare into the pinstriped portion of the 49,217 at Yankee Stadium instead.

Suddenly the bases were loaded. Suddenly, Francisco Lindor was at the plate.

The Mets do this. Sometimes the script goes as it did Sunday, when they thrice came back against the Phillies and won an improbable, 10-9 thriller. Sometimes it goes as this one did, Wandy Peralta coming in and coaxing a fly ball out of Lindor and sealing a 4-2 Yankees win (though damned if Lindor didn’t nearly sneak a bases-clearing rocket down the left-field line two pitches earlier).

“Love the way our guys battled,” Mets manager Buck Showalter said.

The Braves won, of course, dismantling the Pirates as expected, so the lead in the NL East will be back down to two games when everyone wakes up Wednesday. The Mets are nothing if not an adventure, night after night, game after game.

Tuesday, the center of this latest escapade watched Lindor’s ball die in Estevan Florial’s glove from the on-deck circle. It would have been a perfect denouement to this game if Pete Alonso had gotten one last set of swings with the game on the line. He was, after all, awfully active all night.

On the one hand, he did show signs that he may be emerging from his recent offensive struggles, stroking two hits after coming into the game hitting .114 (4-for-35) over the first nine games of the Mets road trip. So frustrated had Alonso gotten that he snapped his bat over his knee, Bo Jackson-style, after fanning against Frankie Montas in the third.

“I feel like I’ve been taking some good swings,” Alonso said. “But sometimes this game of baseball doesn’t go your way.”

And sometimes it takes a couple of zany twists and curious turns, too.

Alonso was at the center of two curious moments that altered then re-altered the shape of the game. In the sixth, after Jeff McNeil hit a double to the wall, Alonso was steaming around third when he seemed to slip on the bag — which would have prevented him from scoring the tying run had Gleyber Torres noticed he’d stopped.

Instead Torres tried to beat McNeil back to second, failed, and Alonso lumbered home to make it 2-2.

“It’s baseball,” Alonso said. “Sometimes you’ve just got to figure it out.”

But an inning later, backtracking on a Jose Trevino pop-up, Alonso whiffed at it, the ball dropped behind him in fair territory, and the Yankees were set up to seize the game — which they did thanks to RBI singles by Andrew Benintendi and Aaron Judge.

Talk about a full and busy day at the office.

“I did the best I could to try and get there, but I just couldn’t make a play,” he said. “It’s a tough, long run but I couldn’t get there, couldn’t make the play.”

Alonso is young enough, and confident enough, to believe that the biggest of all his personal storylines were the two singles he contributed. He didn’t believe this difficult road trip was a slump. He forever believes a hot streak is lurking. Mostly, in his young career, he is right.

“I don’t worry about Pete Alonso,” Showalter had said the other day.

Alonso — along with Lindor — are the two Mets who probably craved (though they’d never say so) the off-day they get Wednesday. They are the two Mets whose names are in the lineup every day, rain or shine. These are still the dog days. And the Mets start a 10-game homestand Thursday that could well define what the balance of the season is going to look like after that.

Alonso will be there, of course, every day, middle of it all. That’s what he does. That’s who he is. That’s what the Mets need him to be.