THIS IS the time for the Mets. It is no longer good enough to be the apprentice, no longer good enough to be the second team in New York and playing for second place in the NL East.

In payroll and in pedigree, the Mets have every right to believe they are ready to be more than a foil, a co-star. It is not satisfactory anymore to talk about closing the gap on the Yankees in the Big Apple and the Braves within the division.

It is clear the Yankees and Braves are vulnerable, that they are not simply going to steamroll to another late-October date. But their weakness is nothing if the Mets cannot capitalize upon it with strength.

“You have to go out and do it,” John Franco said. “You can go out and talk to you are blue in the face. If you don’t win the World Series, then you can’t talk. Until then, keep your mouth shut.”

So the Mets must speak with their play. Show their strength. Deliver a loud, clear message that this is their season. Between now and the All-Star break, the Mets could make a statement that they are the team to beat. In New York. And in the NL East.

Or they can play like last night, when they fell asleep on the job and lost 3-2 to the Phillies in 10 innings, beginning an intriguing 20-game stretch until the mid-season break by looking again like a team unprepared to be more than eternal pursuers of others.

Mike Piazza hit a two-run homer in the first and then the Met offense shut down, most critically when Kurt Abbott did not execute an eighth-inning sacrifice bunt. Mike Hampton pitched inelegantly by walking six in seven innings, but teamed with John Franco to hand Armando Benitez a one-run lead. However, Armando Benitez allowed a game-tying homer by Pat Burrell in the ninth on a 1-2 pitch and a go-ahead, two-out RBI single by Mike Lieberthal in the 10th on a 1-2 pitch.

This was not the way a team with great aspirations handles a last-place club in their home. And the Mets must take advantage of playing at Shea. In the 20-game stretch that began yesterday, 16 are at home, including four against the Braves and three against the Yanks. The first three foes in a four-opponent, 13-game homestand – Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Florida – are a combined 25 games under .500.

The Yanks’ record is now .002 better than the Mets, who trail the Braves by 4½ games. Here are three weeks to change perceptions. For the Mets to climb to first. First in the NL East. First in the city. We have reached a point where it is no longer good enough for the Mets to be building toward something. It is time to be built.

“We’ve seen the Braves’ behind for quite a while and it is not the view we want,” Mets GM Steve Phillips said. “It is probably the same with the Yankees. On any given day, we have stood side-by-side with those two teams. But over the long haul we have been behind. It definitely would be interesting to see the different view.”

Look at what is transpiring in the AL Central. For six years, the Indians essentially went unchallenged. Now they are not showing much spunk playing from behind against the rampaging White Sox. It has been quite a while since the Braves have had to battle from behind in the division. How would Atlanta behave if it became the hunter rather than the hunted?

“We would only know if it means something at the end,” Phillips said.

But the opening exists now. They are on the Braves’ tails. However, that is a too familiar spot. On paper, there is no reason to believe the Mets are playing for the wild card only. The Mets, though, must believe that, not simply mouth the words. Why not them? Why not now?

And that means they need to excise games like last night’s, when they let an outgunned opponent win at Shea. The Mets must recognize that in Hampton and Al Leiter, they have the two best starters in New York. In Edgardo Alfonzo and Piazza, they have legitimate MVP candidates and a 3-4 lineup duo to at least equal Atlanta’s Chipper Jones and Andres Galarraga. In Franco and Benitez, who had a 17-inning scoreless streak snapped yesterday, their end game is better than that of the John Rocker-infected pen of the Braves.

But there is a mind game that must be played, also, and when the Mets lose as they did yesterday, it suggests they still have not reached a level of toughness enjoyed by the Yankees and Braves.

The Yanks, despite all their problems, have won two games in the last week started by Pedro Martinez. The Braves, even without John Smoltz, still have the NL’s best record. But the starting pitching that separated those teams from all others is not nearly as dominant. And the feeling that late October is their birthright is disappearing, if not completely gone.

The question is who will step into the void. Who will push the Yanks off the back page, the Braves to second place? The Mets have been gaining toward this moment. Are they reading to grab hold of it? To stop being eternal pursuers.

“There is an opportunity,” Robin Ventura said. “No one in this clubhouse thinks we’re not as good as those teams.”

Ya Gotta Believe. More important, the Mets have to believe.