Robinson Cano is 36 years old now and coming off a suspension that took half of a season away from him, damaged his reputation and effectively finished his career with the Seattle Mariners, who had once given him a 10-year contract worth $240 million. Now, he is back in New York, where it all began for him with the Yankees, playing second base for the Mets. Just by showing up, even at his age and even with what happened to him last year, it is worth noting that he is as good of a pure hitter as the Mets have ever had.

The Mets have had some big hitters, of course. But they have always been known more for pitching, from Seaver through Gooden all the way to Jacob deGrom. Darryl Strawberry was something to see when he was young. Mike Piazza had huge years at the old Shea Stadium and so did Carlos Beltran. David Wright, before his body betrayed him, was on his way to becoming the greatest of them all.

Now the 2019 Mets organize their batting order around Cano, who if he is close to being the hitter he used to be, will make things better for the guys hitting in front of him and those hitting behind him. And make things a lot better for his baseball team.

“He’s one of those guys,” manager Buck Showalter said about Cano when he was still with the Yankees. “Around the sixth inning of a close game, you start wondering when he’s going to come up in the eighth or the ninth.”

Yoenis Cespedes was briefly one of those guys for the Mets, swinging them all the way to the World Series in 2015, across the second half of a season when he was the most valuable hitter in the whole sport. Now, Cano is batting third for manager Mickey Callaway, at least for now. Cano won the Mets a game against Max Scherzer on Opening Day with a home run his first time up, and then an opposite-field RBI single later. The Nationals got him back Saturday when Cano went 0-for-5. The Mets still scored 11 runs without him. Mets fans know: There were times last season when it seemed like the Mets couldn’t score 11 runs in a month.

It is why Cano is back in New York. Cano is there to make the offense better, to make Michael Conforto and Jeff McNeil and Amed Rosario and Pete Alonso and all of them better. What he did on Opening Day doesn’t mean he is the same hitter who hit 39 homers and had 103 RBI for the Mariners in 2016. It doesn’t mean he is the same guy who has hit .300 or better nine times in his career and once had 118 RBI with the Yankees, where he would have ended up the greatest second baseman in franchise history had he had played his whole career there.

But truly, the Mets have only had a handful of hitters like him. There have been very few left-handed swings like his in their history. After a season when the Mets could not hit, the new general manager, Brodie Van Wagenen, went out and got somebody who had hit in New York before.

Joe Torre was Cano’s manager when he first got to the big leagues in 2005. Cano hit .297 in 132 games that year. He hit .342 the next year, with 15 homers and 78 RBI. He had 19 homers and 97 RBI and a .306 average for Torre in 2007.

I asked Joe the other day where Cano ranks with the best pure hitters he saw as a manager.

Torre: “Very high. For me, he’s very similar to Robbie Alomar.”

Alomar, of course, is one of the best second basemen of all time, and went into the Hall of Fame in 2011. He retired with a lifetime batting average of .300. His best average for one season was .333. His best RBI season was 120, which beats Cano’s best number. His biggest home-run seasons didn’t compare with Cano’s. But it is an apt comparison from the great Torre. Alomar made the game look ridiculously easy, at the plate and in the field, much in the same way that Cano has. And Cano came into this season with a .304 lifetime batting average himself.

There has been a lot of talk, starting in Spring Training, about the Mets’ new hitting coach, Chili Davis, and his philosophy about using the whole field. Mets MLB.com reporter Anthony DiComo had a terrific piece Saturday about Davis and the new approach on a day when the Mets tattooed Stephen Strasburg, Trevor Rosenthal, Matt Grace and Wander Suero for 11 runs, taking the second game of the three-game series.

But all the other hitters up and down the Mets batting order have to do is watch Cano’s approach, watch him use the whole field, watch him take what the pitcher is giving the way he has his entire career. “Situational hitting,” is what Chili Davis calls it, and what Cano has always done with smart hitting his whole career, until he did so much dumb and lasting damage to his reputation last year.

He gets a second chance now with the Mets. He gets a second chance in New York. We will all see what he does with that, from the middle of the Mets' order. There have been others who could hit the way he does in Mets history, just not all that many. The second chance he really gets in New York is to show everybody he is still one of those guys.