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.

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.