Barring injury – fill in your own punchlines here – Yoenis Cespedes is due back next week to deepen what already has been a productive Mets lineup. Plus, Seth Lugo and Steven Matz are expected to fortify what has become an effective rotation, with the spillover positive being Robert Gsellman heading to a leaky bullpen.

But the gift that keeps on giving – yesterday, today and probably tomorrow – is the Mets’ presence in the National League.

Consider that if they were in the AL BEast, the Mets would have the sixth-best record in a five-team division. In the NL LEast, they are in second place, and there are only five teams in the whole league over .500.

However, it is who is over .500 that sets up a problem for the Mets. The smallest of those difficulties is their current opponent, the Brewers, who are just 27-25, actually good for first in the NL Central. But the strong sense remains that the rebuilding Brewers will sink and the struggling, defending-champ Cubs will at some point seize control of a tepid division.

The four best records, though, belong to the Nationals, Dodgers, Rockies and Diamondbacks. That leaves the Mets 8 1/2 games behind the Nationals in the NL East, and because the Dodgers, Rockies and Diamondbacks are all in the NL West, it leaves the Mets seven behind Arizona for the second wild card.

With more than one-quarter of the season played, the Nats and Dodgers are kind of who we expected they’d be – actually both are on 100-plus win arcs.

Surprisingly, the Rockies are on a 99-win pace and the Diamondbacks 96. The Mets are just going to have to believe those teams in particular, or at least one of them, cannot keep up that level of play.

The Rockies, though, look like no fluke. In their first 24 years of existence, they finished over .500 on the road once – 41-40 in 2009. This year, they are 18-8 away from Coors Field, a .692 winning percentage. That would be the best to finish a season since the 1912 New York Giants (.701), who of course never had to play a mile high or even go west of St. Louis.

Colorado has the best pitching depth in its history and enough organizational depth to make a July trade if needed. The Rockies’ soft spot might be three rookies in the rotation (though ace Jon Gray should be back soon, and Chad Bettis might make it back, too) and a roster deep in players who have never played big major league games.

That makes Arizona the more vulnerable of the two, in part because its baseball operations group is in its first year and deep down saw this as more of a rebuild than a go-for-it season. The organizational depth, especially in ready pitching, is not as available.

There is also this: The Dodgers, Rockies and Diamondbacks have a lot of games left against one another, and if you believe the Giants are better than their record, throw them into the NL West showdowns in which the teams beat up each other.

The Mets, to date, have not capitalized on the Braves, Marlins and Phillies, going just 12-12 against three of the majors’ worst teams. But there are still 33 games left against that trio. It won’t matter what happens out West if the Mets do not feast in the East.

This is where the better group comes in. The Mets are third in the NL in scoring in May (behind the Dodgers and Rockies) without a game from Cespedes. The Mets are in their best run of starting pitching all season, with Matz and Lugo potentially back next week.

Sandy Alderson’s history shows he aggressively improves his roster in July if he has a contender. And sitting out in the distance, perhaps, waiting to help for a stretch run, are Noah Syndergaard and Jeurys Familia.

Now, these are the Mets. They annually have difficulty getting healthy, staying healthy and generally getting positive results when it comes to their injured players.

But if you are looking for optimism, the Mets are on the brink of having a much better roster in the coming days while operating in a forgiving league. Thirteen of the Mets’ final 16 games are against the Braves, Marlins and Phillies. Between now and then, can they make that soft landing spot matter?