Juan Soto alone can’t fix this mess, but he’s potentially a significant part of the solution.

The Mets’ best player returned to the lineup Wednesday after 2 ½ weeks away, and if there was a different kind of hope this would be the night the team’s losing streak concluded it was simply because of Soto’s presence in his customary No. 2 hole.

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It’s a lineup that hadn’t started clicking when Soto strained his right calf running the bases in San Francisco on April 3 and then teased everybody for a few days into believing the Mets could survive without him.

Spoiler alert: they could not.