Lucas Duda is the third-place hitter on a New York team that looks as if it finally is a contender.

When the Subway Series commences this weekend, Duda just may be – apologies to Jacoby Ellsbury and the revived Alex Rodriguez – the best position player in this city.

With two position players (David Wright and Travis d’Arnaud) down and four key pitchers (Zack Wheeler, Josh Edgin, Jenrry Mejia and Jerry Blevins) out for a chunk or all of this season, a heavier responsibility than ever falls to a team’s most dangerous hitter. For the Mets, that is Duda.

What was just described is a star. Except physically and temperamentally, Duda is miscast for the role. He was born in Southern California, but you would think Midwest with his hulking size, lumberjack beard and introverted personality.

The long-time joke around the Mets, as the story goes, was Jason Bay once had to inform Duda it takes two people to have a conversation. If Matt Harvey is the Mets’ id unleashed, Duda is their unobtrusive illusionist – somehow remaining mainly unseen and unheard despite being 6-foot-4, 250 pounds and making the loudest sound of all his teammates when his bat meets ball.

He is proving more Paul Bunyan than Paul Newman, but maybe he is about to be Paul O’Neill – the guy who reluctantly went to the three-hole, spoke even more reluctantly about himself and only years into his career learned how to hit lefties well enough to be a full-time force.

“He is on the verge of absolute stardom, right on the cusp,” Mets hitting coach Kevin Long said. “He has strength and size and ability and aptitude and work ethic. He is hitting lefties and he is going to keep hitting lefties. I think he is close to having no deficiencies.”

Of course, Long had to say this. Getting Duda to talk much about himself, it turns out, just might be harder than hitting Matt Harvey.

“That,” Duda said about being a star, “has never crossed my mind one bit. This is a humbling game.”

Even if he were not reserved by nature, Duda’s baseball life is testimony about just how humbling the sport can be.

When the Mets took him in the seventh round of the 2007 draft – the 243rd overall pick – the consensus among scouts who cover Southern California was it was too high. Duda had hit just .280 as a junior at USC. His seven homers led the team, but were not commensurate to his size. There were obvious holes in his swing, questions about his athleticism and lethargy in his body.

Steve Leavitt saw all of that. It was in his reports as the Mets’ area scout. But Leavitt also had watched USC’s fall workouts when the hitters used wood bats. Beyond the right field wall at Dedeaux Field there is a parking structure. Duda kept launching balls onto the top of the structure.

“The serious raw power is the first thing that caught my eye,” said Leavitt, who now covers the same area for the Nationals.

But when a reporter told Leavitt he was working on a story about Duda, the raw power is not the first trait Leavitt mentioned. This is:

“He’s very humble.”

Duda was never viewed as a top prospect with the Mets, could never hold down a position in the minors as he shuttled between first base and the corner outfield. The power was there, and a good hitting eye was another reason to keep pushing him forward. However, first at Double-A and then ultimately in the majors, he would be blocked at first base – his more comfortable, natural position – by Ike Davis, a first-round pick who was going to get more opportunities to fail.

It was not until a year ago – April 18, 2014, to be exact – when the Mets finally removed this impediment, trading Davis to Pittsburgh.

The Mets were heavily influenced by one bit of modern sports science in making this decision: The exit velocities of the baseball off Duda’s bat were superior to those from Davis.

But it was another part of the sport’s modern methods that perhaps has most elevated Duda’s career – the cutting-edge physical training he does with Mike Barwis.

Not long ago, Duda might have had a Dan Pasqua-esque journeyman career in which he had enough power to stick around for a bit, but not enough athleticism or explosiveness or confidence to play a position well and hit lefties and maximize his ability.

After the 2013 season, the Mets began an association with Barwis, who is the CEO of Barwis Methods, which includes his training centers. First in Michigan that offseason and then in Port St. Lucie this past winter Barwis (now a senior adviser of strength and conditioning for the team) put those who wished to participate through his training regimens.

Duda, clearly most comfortable when he is lauding others, credited Barwis for transforming his body, increasing his agility and amplifying his power. Barwis, in turn, called Duda one of the best students he has had and “a world-class human being.” And, of course, the humility: “There is no arrogance or cockiness in Lucas.”

Duda moved from Southern California and bought a home in Port St. Lucie this past offseason so he could, in Barwis’ words, “put in every hour to be there to make it work.” The results are overt.

“There is no baby fat in that body anymore,” Long said.

The leaner Duda has better first-step movement. He has become more than a guy who plays first base to get his bat in the lineup. He is an asset at the position. Third base coach Tim Teufel mentioned how much more aggressive Duda has become in pursuing backhand plays in the hole with his newfound dexterity.

Barwis said Duda has doubled his power output in all the body strength measurables for the upper and lower body, an increase he described as “crazy.”

“If you drive a VW Bug and then you drive a Ferrari, you will notice the difference,” Barwis said. “The reality is that [for a body] Lucas Duda now has a Ferrari.”

Still, even with Davis gone and the better body, the Mets still had doubts about Duda facing lefty pitching. Yes, he hit 30 homers in 2014, but he batted just .180 against lefties. The Mets only spent on two major league free agents in the offseason, Michael Cuddyer and John Mayberry Jr., with the idea one would play left field and one would play first base against lefties — and Duda would sit.

It was worth remembering Davis hit 32 homers in 2012, seemed like the future, then fell apart, in part because he could not hit lefties. In fact, he was one of the few players with worse numbers against southpaws from 2010 to 2014 than Duda. But Duda’s were still atrocious: .212 batting average, .292 on-base percentage, .317 slugging. The .610 OPS was the 11th-worst among those who had 450 plate appearances vs. lefties.

But here is another slash line that looks like that: .215/.270/.326. That was O’Neill against lefties before he joined the Yankees. His .596 OPS was the second-worst in the majors from 1985 to 1992 for those with at least 800 plate appearances versus lefties.

As a Yankee, beginning at age 30, O’Neill hooked up with a hitting coach (Rick Down) who developed a toe-tapping timing mechanism with O’Neill and a belief he could spray lefties to all fields. For the rest of his career, O’Neill had a .751 OPS vs. southpaws.

That success allowed him to become a no-doubt full-time player and be moved (at first reluctantly) into the No. 3 hole. Yet, with all of his success, O’Neill would rather, it seemed, accept kicks in the shin than talk about himself. He became a world-class deflector of praise to his teammates.

Now, here is Duda, at age 29, having hooked up with Long, the former Yankees hitting coach. The two have engaged in a series of drills — such as moving the protective batting practice screen to the extreme first base side to simulate big lefty pitchers such as Andrew Miller and get Duda to keep his front shoulder closed and use the whole field.

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The result is a 5-for-9 start this year against lefties that Duda scoffs at as too small a sample from which to draw conclusions.

That may be true. It is also his way. Not long ago he raised doubt over whether he was qualified to hit third or fourth in the lineup. And even now, when he just might be the best position player in the city, he responds to any question about himself by lauding his teammates.

Reticent personality or not, Duda’s star is rising on a similar trajectory to one of his blasts. He is feared by opposing clubs and appreciated by his own for his skill, worth ethic and team-first mentality.

As Barwis said in summing up the man and his abilities, “He is a modest man and wouldn’t say it himself, but if I am a pitcher, that is a big boy that can turn on a ball now and send it to whatever village he wants to send it to.”