BRADENTON, Fla. — Jon Niese’s words seem harsher in print (or on a screen) than they sound in person.

Though he has riled Mets officials with comments he has made since getting traded to the Pirates, my sense after chatting with him Friday at McKechnie Field is that he holds no hard feelings toward his old team. He just tends to speak bluntly about stuff (like his praise of the Pirates’ defense and his dislike of the Mets’ six-man starting rotation) and not sweat the consequences.

Besides, to get caught up in those words is to miss the greater point. When it comes to Niese, the most important question will be whether Niese pitches better in a Pirates uniform — following an industry trend — than he last did as a Met.

“It’s not like these guys have never been good,” said catcher Chris Stewart, the former Yankee who has been a Pirate since 2014. “They were good before, maybe they had a little setback and Ray puts them back in that mode where they’re good again and then they feel that confidence and they do what they’re capable of.”

“Ray” would be Ray Searage, a product of Long Island’s Deer Park High School and pitcher on the 1981 Mets who is in his seventh year as the Pirates’ pitching coach. Searage’s list of reclamation projects includes former Yankee A.J. Burnett, J.A. Happ, Francisco Liriano and Edinson Volquez.

Searage attributed his success to “Making sure I find out what [the pitchers] are all about. Their families and everything. Their hobbies. And then looking at video.”

“I think it’s not only he sees my mechanics and he knows what I do right and what I do wrong. He knows what to say to help me fix it,” Niese said of Searage.

Niese, a homegrown Met, became a steady, mid-rotation starter in New York. Yet as the Mets’ younger, higher-ceiling starters arrived and Niese endured a poor second half last year, his ERA climbing to 4.13 as he got demoted to the bullpen for October, the left-hander became increasingly superfluous. The Pirates acquired him in a December trade for second baseman Neil Walker.

“It’s not like he’s years and years removed from being pretty solid,” Pirates general manager Neal Huntington said of Niese, who gave up four runs to Toronto in two innings Thursday. “He had a solid first half for them. The second half didn’t go I’m sure the way he or the Mets expected.

“We still saw a major league caliber pitch arsenal from Jon.”

For Niese, a groundball pitcher, Pittsburgh’s well-publicized shifts will be essential. According to Baseball Info Solutions, the Pirates totaled 23 shift runs saved from 2013 through 2015, tying them for 10th place overall. The Mets, with 16 shift runs saved, tied for 16th.

“A lot of times, teams go and they shift just because, say, it’s a Ryan Howard,” Niese said. “’It’s Ryan Howard? OK, we shift. We’re going to run the shift.’ But … there are some pitchers where, maybe you only need to play them to pull and not expose the whole one side of the field. So they look at all that data from past where I faced a certain hitter. Where his tendencies are. And they also look into, how am I going to pitch him?

“So it’s good. They’re really in-depth here, and that’s what I like.”

The Mets, Niese said, “had reasons, too, over there. I just felt like there’s sometimes, where on certain guys that I felt like we didn’t need to shift and they did, and then now all of a sudden they hit it to the part of the field where there’s nobody there. Which kind of frustrated me a little bit. But no, they were good overall.”

Again: Niese is blunt to a fault. He said he maintains regular contact with his former teammates and laughed about his former golf buddy Yoenis Cespedes’ car show in Port St. Lucie.

“He always talked to me last year about his cars,” Niese said. “He would show them to me.

“I’m going to miss the guys more than anything,” Niese said. “But at the same time, I’m coming to an organization that, we win here. I’m not totally sad [to leave the Mets]. I’m a lot closer to home [in Ohio].”

In what could be a tight race among many National League clubs for a playoff spot, Niese could make Mets fans sad by becoming another success on Searage’s résumé.