The sooner 2023 is a distant memory, the better for the Mets.

But Saturday night may have provided some encouragement for next season, as Tylor Megill followed David Peterson’s Thursday night outing with a strong one of his own in a 4-3 win in the first game of a doubleheader.

Francisco Alvarez homered twice and finished with a career-high six RBIs in the nightcap, an 11-4 victory, as the Mets swept the twin bill against the Phillies at Citi Field.

Sure, the playoff-bound Phillies have nothing to play for, since they have locked up the top wild-card spot in the National League, and the Mets’ postseason hopes are long gone and the only math that matters is their position in MLB’s draft lottery.

But the Amazin’s will take any silver lining they can get.

And in the Game 1 win, that was Megill, who threw a career-high 7 ¹/₃ innings and held Philadelphia scoreless into the eighth.

He also featured a split-fingered fastball for the first time after toying with it in spring training after the Mets signed Kodai Senga, whose ghost fork has dominated the majors.

“You watch him go out there and throw it, they know it’s coming and the swings he has [against it], why not try to implement that?” Megill said. “I’ve got the fingers [for it] that are spread out. It feels natural to me.”

In the second game, Alvarez snapped an 0-for-23 skid with a two-run homer in the second and added a grand slam in the third for his first multi-homer game. He has 25 home runs on the season. It’s the fourth-highest total for a rookie catcher.

“I think I can do better than that,’’ Alvarez said.

Pete Alonso had a scare in the second inning of the first game when he was drilled in the helmet by a pitch from Philadelphia’s Taijuan Walker in the bottom of the second.

The 84 mph cutter broke the flap off of Alonso’s helmet and he stayed in the game. He was the DH in the nightcap.

Daniel Murphy was back at Citi Field on Saturday, when he threw out the first pitch after he retired again following a comeback earlier in the season.

Murphy first retired in 2020, but decided to give the game another shot when he was coaching his young sons in Little League.

After starting out with the Long Island Ducks, Murphy ended up playing 38 games for Triple-A Salt Lake in the Angels system before stepping away again when he realized he didn’t have the speed or power to get back to the majors and his children were ready to go back to school.

“It was a fun summer adventure,” said Murphy, 38, who was drafted by the Mets in 2006 and signed with Washington after his outstanding run in the 2015 postseason.

Murphy is unsure of what he will do next. Given his love of hitting, he said he would consider becoming a hitting coach at some point.

“Possibly,’’ Murphy said. “The idea, though, of committing myself to a full-time annual job … is not something I want to do right now. Not to say I wouldn’t [in the future]. It’s a huge time commitment and it should be.”

And he also didn’t rule out becoming a broadcaster.

“I’d be humbled if someone asked me,’’ Murphy said.

The Mets pushed back on the idea that they could have done anything differently on Thursday, when their game against the Marlins was suspended in the ninth inning after a three-plus hour rain delay.

“We’ve got as good a groundskeeper as I’ve seen,’’ Buck Showalter said before Saturday’s doubleheader sweep of the Phillies.

On Saturday, the grounds crew was using blow torches to dry the area around the home plate several hours before the game after Friday’s game was washed out by heavy rains.

The completion of Thursday’s suspended game against Miami was planned for 1:10 p.m. on Monday — had the Marlins needed it for postseason positioning. But they clinched a playoff spot Saturday night.

The Marlins were irritated first by Tuesday’s rainout at Citi Field that caused a doubleheader Wednesday, which impacted their pitching plans for the weekend and then they were forced to stay late into the night during Thursday’s rain delay — and not get the game in — before heading to their weekend series in Pittsburgh.

“Understandably, they were trying to finish games and they didn’t want to come back,’’ Brandon Nimmo said. “They wanted to try to fit the games in and if there were any windows to be had [Thursday], they wanted to play in them.”

Nimmo said he sympathized with Miami’s plight.

“It’s tough,’’ the outfielder said. “We don’t have a roof here. We don’t have a dome. It’s something that maybe we want to look into more. It’s hard, Mother Nature. You can’t control her. If it’s raining five days straight or maybe if it rains five days’ [worth] in 24 hours, there’s only so much control in baseball … I get they wanted to get the games in. We did, too. Trust me. Sometimes things happen outside of your control.”