The hardest thing in the world for young baseball players – and maybe even the veterans – who suffer a frustrating loss is to flush a game and all the emotions with it on the drive home from work, or certainly before the clock strikes midnight. It's just weird to end a long and meandering 162-game regular season loaded with three- and four-game series in a quick win-two wild card. That has a sudden-death feeling.

Make no youth excuses for these Milwaukee Brewers. They wasted a golden opportunity Tuesday to beat the New York Mets in Game 1. The question now is, what do they do to regroup?

It’s a mental game at this point and the Brewers probably have only two choices to reset.

The first is to meet up, dissect and discuss, even briefly, the miscues and minor meltdowns that happened in Game 1. There's no time for grand team meetings, or pulpit lectures from leadership. But with a 6:30 p.m. start, there could be maybe instead positional conversations that could be useful about handling the approach to tonight's elimination game.

Another way – and it sounds like this is the plan – is to return to American Family Field on Wednesday singularly focused on pregame routines.

But here's an argument to come back with that feisty, confident and even brazen style that has served them well all year. The Brewers have to think this way, even if they aren’t feeling like it. Even if they dealt with insomnia or indigestion the night before.

Move on, even if it's messy, even if it's imperfect.

“I think that’s the best way,” Brewers first baseman Rhys Hoskins said Tuesday night in a subdued clubhouse following the 8-4 loss. “Our game kind of makes you do that – just because of timing. We’ve got hours until first pitch tomorrow already.

“Yeah, some mistakes are just simple baseball conversations. And most of the time – at this level – we know already. So that conversation, I think, is more about just getting rid of it and being able to move on to the next game.

“It has to be business as usual. That's the way we've gone about it the whole year and found ourselves pretty successful. So, take our chances tomorrow.”

Maybe you shouldn’t read this next paragraph; it’s like Googling an unconfirmed diagnosis or a medical symptom. But in the brief history of the best-of-three wild-card series, teams that won Game 1 have gone on to advance 14 out of 16 times. Worse for the Brewers, of the 10 teams to take Game 1 while on the road, eight have won the series, including seven via sweep.

Numbers like that are facts and baseball loves its stats, and the New York Mets absolutely earned that mental edge. But the Brewers standpoint should be: so what? There isn’t enough history here yet to bury the Brewers – at least that's what the crew should be thinking. Low-seeded NFL teams have made comebacks in the playoffs (Packers in 2010) and Cinderella NCAA basketball squads have made history. Major League Baseball is just waiting for its modern postseason games to catch up.

This is no the time to say, well, it's a learning experience, for next year, for the Brewers. This team right now has the ultimate leader in Willy Adames. This team right now has speed-demon Brice Turang racing around making singles into doubles. This team right now has been underdogs all year and has proven it can win anyway, including against the Mets in 5 of 6 in the regular season.

Taking a cue from Sal Frelick would be a good idea. He came back from what looked like a hideous collision with a weird chain link window thing on the right outfield wall last week and had initially been ruled doubtful for Game 1.

When he smacked a double against the Mets and dove into second base, he already was pumping his fist in triumph. To Hoskins, it was perfect: Frelick's uniform covered in dirt. The emotion is nice, but it's that competitive drive and mentality that's critical.

"I mean, the whole game, it was just a boxing match," Frelick said Tuesday night. "We threw a punch, they threw a punch. They got the last punch in today. And, you know, I think it's hard sometimes, but these types of games, it's really: how do you punch back? There's going to be so many momentum swings throughout the game. It's just, how do you keep fighting?"

Freddy Peralta, Jackson Chourio, Adames and other players said similar things in the postgame locker room. They said they had the confidence that the Brewers could come back. But really there's no other way to answer that question with intruding cameras in their faces just minutes after the loss.

"We have to believe it," Hoskins said.

How the Brewers approach Game 2 begins in their own minds first, if they prefer to address it individually and/or collectively. The Mets deserve all the credit in the world for what they've been able to accomplish this week with their crazy travel/make-up doubleheader schedule and adrenaline-testing endurance, and they dismissed Milwaukee unceremoniously with impressive pitching and relentless singles.

Dump it and start over.

“Yeah, we’re not going to change a thing,” Frelick said. “That’s why you play three games.

“We’ll come back tomorrow and I think just play with a lot more fire.

"... Nobody's hitting the panic button.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Mindset for Brewers has to be ‘getting rid’ of Game 1 disappointment