It has been a strange season for MJ Melendez.

There was a point during the Mets’ most extreme struggles where he was neck-and-neck with Juan Soto for the best OPS in the starting lineup. He’s since played so poorly that he’s no longer a mainstay in the lineup at all. His offensive production took such a downturn that his roster spot even started to come into question.

But he got his season back on track with a majestic swing Friday night.

Gregory Fisher-Imagn Images

It was a much-needed jolt for the Mets as a team and Melendez personally. The Mets had let a 6-2 lead get away, and were trudging into their league-leading 11th extra-inning game. Having recently been swept by the Marlins in Miami, they were in danger of another demoralizing loss to start this series in Queens.

Melendez had just one hit in his previous 18 at-bats and five in his last 45. His OPS had fallen from 1.024 on May 6 to .673. He didn’t have a homer or an RBI since April.

Deep in a scuffle, Melendez was not in the starting lineup on Friday. He only entered the game after pinch-hitting for another pinch-hitter in Eric Wagaman. He contributed with a sacrifice fly in the seventh inning.

“I came into today just knowing that there’s a possibility to be able to impact the game,” Melendez said on SNY after the game. “I didn’t know how it was gonna happen. And yeah, crazy things happen unexpectedly.”

Batting in a tie game in the 10th, down 0-2 in the count against Pete Fairbanks, Melendez hit a towering drive to the upper deck in right field. The only immediate doubt was whether it would stay fair. The official Baseball Savant distance was what seems like a moderate 373, considering how high it appeared to soar off the bat. In any case, it was a dagger to punch the final blow in the Marlins’ comeback hopes.

Melendez noted in his on-the-field interview with Steve Gelbs that he’d been hooking some balls foul down that line lately.

“That one makes up for all those,” he said with a smirk.

It was the first walk-off hit of Melendez’s career — complete with a well-aimed Gatorade bath.

“Special,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said of the moment. “Especially what he’s been going through the past couple weeks. … It’s been hard for him. And then for him today, in that situation against a pretty tough right-handed pitcher, to get to that fastball like that … you’ve got to give him credit. This guy continues to work. He was one of the ones [Friday] hitting early out there.”

In a vacuum, Melendez’s homer — his third of the season — doesn’t erase how direly he’s struggled in May. But the blast did get his OPS back above .700. It is now .726, which would have ranked third in the Mets’ starting lineup on Friday.

Perhaps that says more about how bleak the Mets’ offense has been. Still, after Melendez had started to create some concerns over whether he was good enough to stick around, he powered his season back in a positive direction for the time being.

The reality could very well be that Melendez is just settling into his true-talent form. Realistically, he was never going to stay up there with Soto in offensive production. He’s obviously not that caliber of hitter. But he might not be a waste of roster space, either. Baseball has a way of evening itself out, and that seems to be what’s happening with Melendez. He started mega-hot, then turned mega-cold, and now — interestingly enough — his overall numbers look fairly similar to his 2022-24 stats with Kansas City, three seasons in which he got fairly substantial playing time. Low-.200s batting average, OBP around .300 and a slugging percentage around .400.

Which is a perfectly acceptable bat to have in the bottom half of the order or coming off the bench. Relying on Melendez to be a key middle-of-the-order bat would be overzealous, but he showed Friday that even through his struggles, he might have a place on this Mets team.