MILWAUKEE — A New York club waved the white flag.
The trade deadline came, and big-money and big-name stars went, signaling a rebuild was coming.
With expectations on the floor and with little pressure to make a forgettable season memorable, the club stunned everyone.
Suddenly a playoff run was in the offing, a run made more special by the doubters looking foolish.
Luis Severino has been on two such clubs.
“In ’17, it was like we weren’t trying to win. We said we will,” the starting pitcher said in looking back at the 2017 Yankees, which reminded him of the 2024 Mets. “I feel like that year, we got more than five guys that had the best year of their life.”
At the 2016 trade deadline with the Yankees floundering, the club shipped out Carlos Beltran (now a special assistant to David Stearns), stud lefty Andrew Miller and Aroldis Chapman.
They accepted defeat, called up some little-known rookies such as Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez (who is now a Brewer), and plotted future success around acquired prospects like Gleyber Torres (which worked out), Clint Frazier, Justus Sheffield and Dillon Tate (which did not).
A year later, the Yankees shocked the baseball world by bouncing back from a sell-off and a modest offseason to make a run to Game 7 of the ALCS.
Out of nowhere, a young Severino emerged into an All-Star, not fully unlike the out-of-nowhere emergence of Sean Manaea from a solid pitcher into the Mets ace.
Judge, who had gotten his feet wet in 2016 and struck out in 44.2 percent of his at-bats, turned into one of the most feared power hitters in the game — not fully unlike the breakout of Mark Vientos, who struggled to make contact against major league pitching before asserting himself as one of the best hitting third basemen in baseball this season.
The 2024 Mets have consistently told one another that no one expects them to win — not after Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer were jettisoned at the 2023 trade deadline, and not after Stearns’ first offseason as president of baseball operations produced pieces who seemed more like bridges to better times than players who would see those better times themselves.
Then the Mets got off to a slow start and were 11 games under .500 in late May.
But they went 67-40 the rest of the way to earn a wild-card berth.
They are tied 1-1 in that best-of-three series against the Brewers, after Wednesday’s 5-3, Game 2 defeat.
Severino, who pitched a gutsy six innings in Tuesday’s Game 1 victory over the Brewers at American Family Field, saw one more parallel for a Mets club that wants to make it further than the league championship series.
“We didn’t need to hit a homer to win every game [in 2017],” said Severino, who watched his offense repeatedly come through with clutch singles Tuesday. “These guys, we just do everything we can to win games.”
