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Oliver Marmol referred to it as a “youthful� series for all its lessons.

And one of the biggest is about to begin.

“We hit adversity, so we’re going to learn a lot about ourselves now,� Brendan Donovan said. And he elaborated: “You do like to see some fight out of the club. You want to win. You want to stack wins together. You also want to see how you respond to situations like this early in the year.�

With all their stars out twinkling in the afternoon, the Mets completed a royal flush of the Cardinals with a 7-4 victory Easter Sunday at Citi Field. Francisco Lindor led off with a homer, Juan Soto had three RBIs, and Pete Alonso chipped in with an RBI for an early 3-0 lead. The Cardinals elbowed their way back into the score with Thomas Saggese’s two-run, game-tying double in the seventh inning. The knot didn’t survive the inning. Shortly after robbing a home run, Brandon Nimmo delivered the tie-breaking run and sent the Mets to the first four-game series sweep against the Cardinals since 2017 and the Mets’ first series sweep of the Cardinals since 2007.

The Cardinals have opened the season with nine losses in their first 10 road games. For the first time since 1985 and only the third time in franchise history they’ve won one or fewer road games in their first 10.

“We’ve got to figure out how to win on the road — obviously,� said starter Sonny Gray, who struck out six and limited the Mets to three runs on six hits in six innings. “But having said that, there was still no give up. There was no give up at all. You come in here and you play a really good baseball team with high expectations for themselves — easier said than done — and we got swept. We didn’t give up. We didn’t crumble.�

Within that comment, Gray summarized the weekend.

The Mets, with the lowest ERA so far this season and a billion dollars’ worth of talent stuffed at the top of their lineup, are indeed a really good baseball team. They’re built to win now and capable of showing the gaps — financial and otherwise — between what a contender looks like in today’s game vs. the “transitioning� Cardinals.

The Cardinals remain a feisty group. They have visited Citi Field before and been shellacked. Not this time. Two games were decided in the seventh or later. All four were decided by three runs or fewer.

And, finally, as Gray said, they must “figure out how� to win.

That is a work in progress.

That is, as the Cardinals have said, part of this year’s process.

“We got beat, bottom line,� Marmol said. “You still played good baseball. It just wasn’t good enough against the guys across the way. You played the game the way you wanted to play the game, and you had some big spots come up. There are positives to take out of it.�

Two days after hitting a walk-off homer in the ninth to erase the Cardinals’ comeback, Lindor started early with the 22nd leadoff homer of his career. He tagged a sinker and sent it 402 feet into the seats for a 1-0 lead on Gray’s fourth pitch. The Mets’ first three runs came as RBIs from their trio of superstars. Batting Nos. 1, 2 and 3 all weekend for the Mets was the $760 million man Soto sandwiched between NL MVP runner-up Lindor and Home Run Derby champ Alonso. The Cardinals had to get through the hit kings of Queens 18 times during the weekend.

They produced 12 runs as a trio, three more than the Cardinals did as a team.

“That’s as tough of a 1-2-3 as you’re going to see just about anywhere in the league,� starter Miles Mikolas said.

A feisty group more than a top-heavy group, the Cardinals clawed back Sunday with an RBI groundout by Alec Burleson and then Saggese’s third double in two days. The Mets called on right-handed reliever Jose Butto to face Saggese with two teammates on base, and the young infielder pulled a double to left field that scored both for a 3-3 game.

Saggese put himself at the nexus of the series for the Cardinals — right there at the crossroads of performance and experience. He had two of the Cardinals’ three hits in Saturday’s shutout. He also had a few baserunning missteps, like dashing from third on a groundball to third only to be thrown out at home. He led off the ninth inning Saturday in a three-run game, went for a slider, and could have taken a different approach. In all those cases, a coach came to Saggese and discussed what happened, why, and what next. Marmol had similar conversations with some young hitters who struck out in situations aching for a ball in play to produce a run.

The in-game instruction and tone of these conversations have been hallmarks of games in this development season for the Cardinals — and it illustrates where they’ve placed priorities.

“When you think about 2025 and what some of the things you’re looking for outside of the win/loss column, (Saturday) was the perfect example of a youthful game,� Marmol said. “What you want to make sure of is that’s not happening in July. That’s the goal.�

Mets starter Clay Holmes, a reliever in the Bronx a year ago, pitched a season-high six innings. He and the other Mets pitchers who followed benefited from an off-center strike zone by umpire Bill Miller that caught a few Cardinals, like Burleson, on pitches out of the zone. Six of the Cardinals’ 11 strikeouts were on called strike three.

They struck out 43 times in the series and had 24 hits.

Nimmo reached over the left-field wall to take a homer away from Jordan Walker in the sixth, and then Nimmo’s RBI single up the middle off Phil Maton broke the tie his catch helped create. Soto added a two-run double in the eighth as a fitting punctuation. The Cardinals lost three of the four games by three runs, yet did not get the tying run to the plate in the ninth.

“You’re asking how we close the gap,� Burleson said. “They have a lot of experience over there. You’ve got guys in here who are still trying to find their way. I throw myself in that group. Trying to figure out who we are, trying to establish ourselves, and move on from there. Close the gap? We’re not far. We weren’t stringing (hits) together and I feel like that’s what they did a good job of, and I’m in the middle of that, too.

“We’re getting there,� he concluded. “It’s going to be some work. We’re on the way.�