TAMPA — The last time the baseball world saw Harrison Bader, the Yankees’ center fielder had transformed into Mickey Mantle. Bader smoked a home run every seven plate appearances in the 2022 postseason — five dingers in nine games — in which he represented one of the few live bats in a dying Yankees offense.

Did Bader unlock a new degree of power, or did he get hot at the right time?

Neither, Bader believes: He got healthy at the right time.

While with the Cardinals last year, Bader was suffering from plantar fasciitis, beginning in spring training. The foot pain “prevented and stunted my growth,” but did not take him out of the lineup — at least not right away. That changed in late June, when the pain got worse and sidelined him until September.

By that point, the trade deadline had come and Bader had gone to the Yankees in exchange for Jordan Montgomery.

“Having that foot issue when you’re trying to swing just makes it more difficult,” said Bader, whose regular-season numbers were down last season, with a career-worst .650 OPS between the Cardinals and Yankees. “Finding ways to be more successful were really difficult at times.”

With the Yankees, he sparkled in center field as a reigning Gold Glove winner, but he scuffled at the plate, hitting .217 in 14 regular-season games as he worked to find his timing after nearly three months of resting and rehabbing his foot.

He discovered that timing through a postseason that manager Aaron Boone called “unbelievable.” Bader became the first Yankee ever to hit his first home run for the team in the playoffs — and proceeded to become the first Yankee ever to slam four homers in his first six postseason games.

“I was able to do my drills. I was able to get myself in a positive mind frame,” Bader said after practice Wednesday. “I really just viewed that as a continuation of the season I had in 2021.”

The second half of the 2021 campaign marked the last time he felt healthy. He fought off early season forearm and rib injuries that bothered him until July, then ripped off three months of unimpaired, excellent, two-way play, after which he won the NL Gold Glove despite appearing in just 103 games. He hit .279 with 12 home runs in 81 games from July 1-Oct. 3, 2021.

“I had a really good year in 2021,” said Bader, who set his career-high in home runs, with 16 in just 401 plate appearances.

He is not predicting, even fresh off a star-turn of a postseason, that he will smash his personal home-run mark, and the Yankees are not expecting the homers to keep flying the way they were in October.

“I think he was probably at a 100-homer pace in the playoffs,” Boone said.

But the club and player hope a great end to one season can jump-start a great beginning to the next.

“Hopefully, it is a sign of things to come,” Boone added.

For Bader, the only goal is to remain healthy and play as many games as possible.

“With health, I can put my best foot forward,” the 28-year-old said, using an appropriate idiom.