How much longer will the Phillies’ World Series window remain open after being ousted by the Mets?

NEW YORK — Carlos Estévez squatted on the mound, looked back over his left shoulder, and watched it go.

The ball? Sure. The ball flew into the Phillies’ bullpen in right-center field for a backbreaking, series-clinching grand slam for Mets star Francisco Lindor in the sixth inning Wednesday night.

More than that, though, away went the Phillies’ season.

It ended with a thud, 4-1 in Game 4 of the National League Division Series. That’s one round earlier than last October, which ended one round earlier than the October before that, when the Phillies went on a magically unexpected ride that didn’t end until the World Series and bears a striking echo to what’s going on here in New York.

How long ago does that seem? It was supposed to be just the beginning. Instead, as the players that owner John Middleton believes represented the Phillies’ best team since 2011 stared blankly at their lockers and commiserated over a few beers in a funereal clubhouse, it had to be asked: How much longer will the window remain open?

“Obviously it’s getting shorter. Right?” Bryce Harper said. “I think [Kyle Schwarber] has one more [year]; I think J.T. [Realmuto] has got one more. But I think at the same time you don’t pay [Zack Wheeler] and [Aaron] Nola if you don’t think you’re going to be competitive for the next five years.”

Indeed, the Phillies have 11 players — Wheeler, Trea Turner, Harper, Nola, Realmuto, Nick Castellanos, Schwarber, Taijuan Walker, José Alvarado, Matt Strahm, and Cristopher Sánchez — locked up for a total of $220.5 million (calculated for the luxury tax). Several others, including Alec Bohm, Bryson Stott, Brandon Marsh, and Ranger Suárez, are under club control.

But the Phillies ran it back after last year, when the bats went icy cold in back-to-back losses at home in Game 6 and 7 of the NL Championship Series.

Will they really do it again?

If anything, the early exit against the Mets — and if we’re being honest, pretty much everything that happened after the All-Star break — exposed their weaknesses, especially with an offense that doesn’t put enough balls in play to avoid prolonged frigid spells that can be season-killers.

» READ MORE: Murphy: Phillies’ crushing NLDS loss raises questions about longterm futures of Bohm, Marsh, even Thomson

The Phillies vowed to channel last October’s inconceivable upset into a season’s worth of motivation. And darned if it didn’t look like they might. They raced to a 37-14 start, then took their show to London, where they won the first game against the Mets, of all teams, and improved to 45-19. They looked like a wagon.

Instead, they turned out to be two-faced.

Because when Schwarber came to the plate as the tying run and struck out on a series-ending 101 mph fastball from Mets closer Edwin Díaz, the Phillies fell to 51-50 (including the postseason) since the London trip.

“It can’t happen,” Harper said. “We knew when you play that way down the stretch, it can come back to bite you a little bit. But as a team, we shouldn’t have been thinking about that. Because it is a brand-new season when you get to the postseason.”

Said Realmuto: “It’s hard to stay hot for 162 games. We knew we weren’t playing our best baseball coming into the postseason. But we were hoping that, once the lights turned on, we’d flip the switch and our offense would get back going. It just didn’t happen for us.”

» READ MORE: Hayes: Rob Thomson, the sluggers, and relievers cost the Phillies a World Series season as the Mets take the NLDS, 3-1

That’s an understatement. The Phillies picked up four — count ‘em on one hand — hits in Game 4. They scored an unearned run in the fourth inning, and it counted as an eruption for a team that scored 12 runs in the series and batted .186 (24-for-129).

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Schwarber said. “It [bleeping] hurts. It’s not a good feeling.”

And yet, somehow, the bullpen was even more disappointing.

Wheeler, Sánchez, Nola, and even Suárez combined to allow six earned runs in the four games. Suárez, an uninspiring pick to start an elimination game given his struggles after the All-Star break, left the bases loaded in the first and second innings and somehow took a 1-0 lead into the fifth.

But the bullpen gave up 16 earned runs in 12⅔ innings, which computes to an 11.37 ERA. Jeff Hoffman was a prime suspect. The All-Star righty, Rob Thomson’s most trusted reliever, gave up three runs without recording an out in Game 1. He warmed up in the second, third, and fifth innings of Game 4 and bailed Suárez out of a two-on, one-out jam in the fifth.

Hoffman came back out for the sixth inning and loaded the bases before yielding to Estévez. Hoffman is among the few free agents on the roster. He couldn’t hold back tears when he considered re-signing with the Phillies.

“It’s all I want,” he said, tearing up. “It’s hard to think about right now.”

Estévez is also headed into free agency. He was the Phillies’ big addition at the trade deadline, a closer who held down the ninth inning and enabled Thomson to use Hoffman and Matt Strahm earlier in games.

In this case, Thomson needed Estévez in the sixth. Estévez fell behind in the count, 2-1, to Lindor and tried to elevate a 99 mph fastball. He didn’t get high enough, and well, let Estévez take it from here.

“I knew it right away,” he said. “Unfortunately it was more middle-away instead of up and away. As soon as he hit it, I knew he hit it really well.”

And now, reality will hit these Phillies like a Lindor sledgehammer, leaving only a slew of questions in its wake.

Where do they go from here? How do they get better? Is their expensive core good enough to win?

“I would hope so,” Turner said. “We’ve got the right guys in here. I think we have what it takes in here, and we’ve got to find a way to get it done next year.”