PORT ST. LUCIE — The Mets could win the NL East. The Mets can win the World Series. That’s true even with the Yankees across the Triborough and now Mookie Betts across the country making the superpower Dodgers more super.

After a winter in which the Mets’ good days were filled with gut punches and their bad days with too familiar self-inflicted knockout punches, let’s begin with that counterpunch of optimism. For if you can’t see the best possibilities as spring training opens, when will you?

On paper, the Mets’ 2020 roster stacks up with the one the Nationals used to win it all last year. In the National League, only the Dodgers are clearly better and the Nationals ousted the Dodgers in the Division Series last year thanks to a strength they share with these Mets — a powerhouse rotation. My suspicion is — if Los Angeles executives were on truth serum — the Mets would be the NL team they would least want to face because of that starting pitching combined with the potential for a strong lineup and bullpen.

Will the Mets maximize that potential? It is not their history. The winter was again a reminder that this organization has a way of finding every pothole and incurring every pie to the face. They hired and fired the same manager this offseason. They had controlling interest in the franchise sold and then nope. The organization had to handle the public revelation that the most expensive per-annum player in its history was injured dodging a wild boar.

The Mets make it so easy to assume the worst. You could have arrived at Whatever They Are Calling The Stadium This Year Field on Monday and noticed scores of construction workers still working on just about every part of a far-from-finished $57 million renovation. Hardhats were far more abundant than Mets caps. Drills and hammers muffled any mitt popping. The smell was not spring flowers as much as new carpet. The Mets at least had the sense to call this edition Clover Park rather than Clover Field and make the horror-movie one-liners all the easier.

But like with the Mets, you have to look a little deeper. Mets officials visited a bunch of spring training facilities to prepare for this facelift and were particularly impressed with the terrific Salt River Fields in Scottsdale, where the Diamondbacks and Rockies train. And if you could ignore the hardhats and drills, you would notice that this version of the Mets spring facility is going to be far superior to what existed previously. More Salt Lick than salt mines.

Jeff Wilpon took reporters on a tour of the facility and promised that it would be ready in full for a college game between UConn and Michigan on Feb. 21. I couldn’t help but wonder if Wilpon helped oversee this construction only to hand it off soon to another ownership, along with the rest of the franchise. He would not answer that when I asked, sticking to a say-nothing statement about nondisclosure agreements and looking ahead, not behind.

Here is something else I have been thinking a lot about in the last week — does anybody leave their association with the Mets with a better reputation than when they arrived? Jessica Mendoza recently exited a role as a special adviser worse for the year on the job. Steve Cohen not only didn’t finalize a deal to expand his interest in the Mets from 8 percent to 80 percent, but because owning a major league team is so high profile he had the world reminded anew that when he was in charge his former company pled guilty to insider trading and paid $1.8 billion in penalties.

The Wilpons are not great at introspection, but they probably should be delving into why the associations end so terribly — remember when Carlos Beltran and the Mets were going to countersue over issues around knee surgery; thus, he parted twice in messy situations? The owners should be wondering why when ownership negotiations broke down folks with no history lined up on Cohen’s side to believe the worst about the Wilpons, especially Jeff.

Because if an auction to sell the team goes well or a deal with Cohen could ever be resurrected then this might be the last year of Wilpon ownership and they will be the ones heading toward the door. And maybe too much bad has happened in their reign to spritz cologne on and make their exit any different from those who have worked for them, which is to say unsatisfying.

But I will return to the beginning of this piece — the Mets are good enough to win. What they need to avoid is the pathology that so often befalls them. They need to make the most out of this talented roster — imagine if they get close to the best from Edwin Diaz and even Yoenis Cespedes — and not have the players sidetracked by one silly sideshow followed by poorly thought-out pratfalls tied in a bow of missteps.

Maybe upgrading their facility to something that looks like it belongs in 2020 rather than the baseball Third World of the past is a start of a last best chance by the Wilpons. Their team can win — if ownership lets it.