Maybe this didn’t mean anything; actions, especially as far as the Mets go, will always mean more than words uttered in the moment. Still, this was a public departure for Jeff Wilpon, the Mets’ COO, the target of so much derision from his team’s disaffected fan base.

Two chronic charges have been lobbed at the Mets corporate leadership across the past decade. One is rooted in fact — the Mets do not spend with the unabashed vigor of other teams who reside in big markets like New York. They don’t go dollar-for-dollar with the Dodgers, with the Cubs, with the Red Sox, with — most notably — the Yankees. That’s a matter of public record and much public hand-wringing.

The other allegation is less easy to confirm, but no less a concern among the rank-and-file: a sense that Wilpon, along with Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, are something less than committed to winning. Some of that is mere interpretation: If you don’t spend in a sport without a salary cap, are you really trying? And if you aren’t trying, you clearly don’t care.

Except there was Jeff Wilpon on Thursday afternoon, speaking pointedly and publicly about his team and his ambition for that team, for one of the first times ever:

“It hurts watching these games on TV right now,” Wilpon said. “I feel unfulfilled. We left games on the field we should have won.”

And then: “We’re not playing October baseball, and that’s what it’s about. It’s what we all want to get to.”

The Mets still get a lot wrong. But for once, it seems, the message they want to deliver their constituents is clear: We want what you want. We want to win.

So the words Mets fans have been yearning for have been uttered; now comes the hard part. Now comes the action from Mets brass that will either back up and reinforce these freshly expressed expectations or leave them feeling emptier than Citi Field for those Marlins games last week.

And this is the action those words demand: Hire a manager with gravitas, with a record of success, with a forceful manner and a winning reputation that will be beyond the reproach of skeptical fans and cynical media. The trend among many baseball teams is to be cute, to overthink, to wander far outside the box.

Sometimes that yields Alex Cora and A.J. Hinch.

More often it yields Brad Ausmus. Or Mickey Callaway.

Wilpon and Brodie Van Wagenen don’t need cute. They need to go for a sure thing. There are three of those presently available in the marketplace, though one — Joe Maddon — seems earmarked for Anaheim.

That leaves Joe Girardi and Buck Showalter.

And by the time October is done, one of those two needs to be planted in the manager’s office at Citi Field, evaluating a roster that should absolutely be capable of reaching October next year, and sticking around awhile.

Girardi — younger by eight years, owner of one World Series ring as a manager and three as a player — should be the first call because in New York City we have seen, first-hand, what a first-rate field manager he is.

He won plenty with some stocked Yankees rosters, but Girardi actually did some of his finest work when he wasn’t blessed with a surplus of talent. He was the 2006 NL manager of the year when he won 78 games with what should have been a dreadful Marlins team. And he was at his best during a four-year stretch with the Yankees when he averaged 85 wins with teams that, in lesser hands, would’ve won 8-10 fewer games than that every year.

Showalter? His has been a career spent teaching losing teams how to win, though he never has stayed around long enough to taste the ultimate prize. He built the Yankees and Diamondbacks to the brink. Take a look at Orioles history the last 20 years and look at the lone outlier: three playoff seasons between 2012-16.

Both men come not only with experience but with New York experience, and though that might seem a self-important characterization for a job like this, all you needed to do was observe Callaway every day the past two years to see how much that really matters.

Neither will come cheaply, but both Wilpon and Van Wagenen insisted that wasn’t going to be a concern.

“The game plan or the goal is to find the right person to take us forward,” Van Wagenen said. “We haven’t contemplated a financial component.”

Words. Good words, encouraging words, but just words right now. The action that follows is all that matters. Getting the right man is all that matters. Putting Girardi or Showalter in a Mets uniform is all that matters right now.