Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

In every possible way, 2020 has been unlike anything we’ve ever experienced.

Then Yoenis Céspedes does what he did on Friday and we’re reminded that some things really haven’t change.

Two years and four days after the last time he was penciled into a major league lineup, Céspedes literally picked up right where he left off, smashing a towering home run that was the difference in the Mets’ 1-0 Opening Day win over the Atlanta Braves.

“It was very exciting just to be playing again and to have a moment where I played and also hit the home run that decided the game,” Céspedes said through translator Alan Suriel. “I don’t have words for a situation like that.”

Céspedes, who had said earlier in Camp that facing live pitching again would be like riding a bike, punished Chris Martin for leaving a fastball over the plate and sent it traveling at 103.5 mph into the empty left field seats 406 feet away.

It was his third-straight game with a home run, though there were 68 days between the first two and 735 days between the last two.

“We have a feel that something is going to happen when he’s at the plate and he showed it again today,” manager Luis Rojas said. “It’s almost like he didn’t lose a beat of who he is.

“Credit to him and the preparation that he’s put to get back and be in the Opening Day lineup.”

Céspedes had homered in Philadelphia on May 13, 2018 before going on the disabled list with a strained hip flexor, then hit another on July 20 at Yankee Stadium. Overcome by twin heel calcifications, he was unable to play again until Friday.

Though he had turned heads in Summer Camp batting practices and intrasquad games, the level to which he may have performed in a controlled environment was no indicator of regular season success.

And that isn’t to say what we saw on Friday was a guarantee of the return of 2015-2016 Céspedes. He looked overeager in his first two at-bats, popping out to the catcher in foul territory then hitting a first-pitch dribbler to third base. At his valleys, his propensity for strikeouts can be a detriment to the lineup.

But at his peaks — like the lightning flash that hit Citi Field in the bottom of the seventh on Friday — man, that’s a special player.

No doubt a motivated one, too.

“Some people said good things, a lot of people said bad things,” Céspedes said. “That was one of the things that kept me motivated to come back. Being able to hit a home run after being out for two years, it proved to me that I can still be the same player that I used to be.”

Do they need him to be the Céspedes from four-plus years ago? Not necessarily, unless we use a rudimentary definition of what that player was.

If he’s healthy, the Mets will take whatever his performance dictates. No longer feeling the pressure of a near-$30 million salary (he is now making $11 million, prorated), the worst-case scenario is he becomes a bench bat.

But as long as Céspedes has some more where Friday’s blast came from, his impact on the lineup could rival his 2015-2016 output. It’s all a testament to the work he has put in to get back to this preliminary — in the context of the rest of the season — stage.

He believes it. Very soon we might be forced to believe it too.

“With the way that I’ve been preparing myself — the way that I will continue to prepare myself — and the way that I’ve been feeling better each and every day, I will return to being that player from back then.”