Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Mike Puma about the inside buzz on the Mets.

For what surely will be the only time this year at Citi Field, a Juan Soto strikeout was met with cheers.

Another long bottom of the inning had mercifully ended, this one entailing the Mets scoring seven runs. Finally, the 42,112 on hand could be done with the overwhelming and overboring Mets offense and could watch Jonah Tong pitch again.

For one energetic night in Queens, the vast majority of the sellout crowd preferred the starting pitcher to his team.

Such is the excitement for Tong, a 22-year-old phenom known for a nastiness on the mound and a kindness off of it.

There is plenty of hope that the future of the Mets was on display on Friday — a future that might have just arrived.

Tong was encouraging and intriguing if not perfect in his debut, a 19-9 destruction of the Marlins in a contest whose result essentially was decided after five Mets batters.

4

4

When the onslaught was finished, the Mets had set a new franchise record for runs scored at home and gave Luis Torrens his first taste of pitching.

Perhaps trying to atone several years later for its unfriendliness toward Jacob deGrom, the Mets offense scored five runs in the first — No. 2 hitter Juan Soto smoked a two-run homer against young star Eury Pérez before No. 5 hitter Brandon Nimmo socked a three-run shot — and seven more in a 12-batter second in which nine consecutive Mets reached base.

4

When Soto whiffed, the crowd stood on its feet to welcome Tong back to the rubber after another extended break.

The best minor league pitcher in baseball had to weather Day 1 nerves, interminable half-innings and a defense that let him down late, but his stuff flashed enough that the club can envision that it has unwrapped a second Nolan McLean in the heat of a playoff race.

When his five innings were over — punctuated by a called strike three to ring up Liam Hicks, home-plate umpire Andy Fletcher perhaps coaxed by a crowd desperate for the escape — Tong had allowed four runs (just one earned) on six hits with zero walks and six strikeouts.

He had not allowed four runs in any of his 22 starts with Double- or Triple-A, but miscues behind him were more to blame.