Milwaukee Brewers at New York Mets

Almost immediately upon hitting the turf, Francisco Lindor bounced back to his feet, looked up toward the Citi Field crowd and screamed. He pounded his chest once, then twice, eventually lifting both hands above his head. Lindor’s diving catch, which prevented the go-ahead runs from crossing home for the Brewers in the ninth inning Tuesday, probably won’t have any real impact on the Mets’ season. The 3-2 walk-off win in 10 innings that ended with a David Hamilton throwing error won’t lift New York into the playoffs, nor erase much of the bad taste from this summer. But it was something. For Lindor, it was something. “The team has picked me up more times than I’ve picked them up this year,” Lindor said. “So to be there for the guys, it meant a lot. I’ve been wanting to do that.” ​ Within the context of Tuesday’s game, the Mets never needed Lindor more than in the top of the ninth, when a bullpen crunch forced them to entrust middle reliever Austin Warren with a one-run lead. Warren quickly allowed the tying run to score before the Mets turned things over to Jefry Yan, who walked a batter to load the bases with two outs. The next batter, Hamilton, lofted a soft line drive toward shortstop, where Lindor was shaded up the middle. He had less than two seconds to race to his right, dive and snare the baseball, robbing Hamilton of a go-ahead hit that would have likely scored two runs. “I already saw that ball down,” Mets interim manager Andy Green said. “It’s that deflating feeling when you know the ball’s about to land. He came out of nowhere.” It was the type of play that, in any other year of Lindor’s career, might have seemed inevitable. Not so this year. On either side of a two-month stay on the injured list due to a badly strained left calf, Lindor struggled, particularly defensively. In his first 17 games back from the IL, the typically surehanded Lindor committed five errors, leading to a season-long total of nine.