Here is the path for Mets to avoid selling at the 2023 MLB trade deadline

You could hear the crowd percolating in the moments after Francisco Alvarez blasted a 394-foot home run to the second deck in left field in the first inning on Tuesday, popping like auditory flashbulbs the way it does when it can’t come down from a high.

It was still humming when Brett Baty stepped in and banged one off the batter's eye in center field -- the first-ever set of back-to-back homers for this pair of promising rookies, and a reminder that Citi Field can still rock in 2023, if only the team gives it a reason.

The Mets went on to win ugly against the White Sox, 11-10, and staved off the death of the season for another day. If this team can find its way to the same result in, say, four of the next five games, it will arrive at next Tuesday’s Subway Series with a chance to remain intact after all.

In other words, if the players give their front office a reason to skip the fire sale, the front office will take it.

It’s a dirty semi-secret in baseball that there are years when an owner or general manager roots against a midsummer hot streak that disrupts their plans to sell at the trade deadline. Modern baseball operations departments try to operate with cold rationality, and if they do not deem their club championship-caliber, they want to move veterans for prospects. Forget about unexpected fun in August and September.

The 2022 Baltimore Orioles, who traded their closer Jorge Lopez and popular veteran Trey Mancini when in the thick of the Wild Card race, come to mind as a recent example.

This is not at all what the Mets brass is thinking or feeling. They want to get back in this thing, have some fun, sell some tickets, recover some of that 2022 progress squandered in the first half of this season. They don’t want to sell, dammit.

They’re also not blind or irrational. Steve Cohen, Billy Eppler and their staff know that Tuesday began with the Mets facing a 13.4 percent chance of making the playoffs, according to the Fangraphs odds that baseball execs check every morning like we check our texts and emails.

They also knew that they began play 8.5 games back of the third and final Wild Card spot, with five teams ahead of them. And they know that the post-All Star portion of their schedule began with a flat series loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers that not even a Sunday evening walk-off win could enliven.

And they know that even this win got ugly. When the bullpen allowed five runs in the seventh inning to blow most of what had been a seven-run lead, Citi Field settled back into the jeering angst that has defined the spring and summer around here.

In what was once a blowout, Buck Showalter was forced to use his high-leverage relievers -- Brooks Raley, Adam Ottavino, and David Robertson -- which could make the rest of the series more complicated.

In summary, the Mets know that they are very nearly cooked.

But there is a difference between ailing and dead. As of Monday, the Mets had not yet signaled to other clubs that they were open for business, and had not yet begun to discuss specific players with those clubs. Rival teams are acting with respect for how deeply invested, financially and emotionally, the Mets are in this season.

When, according to sources, is that expected to change? Next Monday, following a weekend series in Boston.

Now -- and no one from the Mets has spelled this part out for me explicitly -- I have a hunch that if the team wins this series against Chicago and the next one against the Red Sox, they will fend off those trade discussions for another few days.

That would buy us all the privilege of watching a high-stakes miniseries against the Yankees next Tuesday and Wednesday. That would take us to July 26, six days before the deadline.

What if the Mets are still alive then? Well, it’ll be a pivotal long weekend in Washington to close the month.

For any of this to happen, so much more will have to go right this week and next than it has to date. That’s the box into which the Mets have played themselves -- one that will require a Houdini act to escape.

But no one around here wants to call the season over at the beginning of August. With a collection of nights like Tuesday, they might not have to.

Likely? No.

But they’re not quite dead yet.