Steve Cohen could sense frustration with Jeff McNeil.

His numbers for 2023 are far from those that earned him the National League batting title last year.

So the Mets’ owner called McNeil on Wednesday and specifically referenced that conversation later with reporters.

Cohen said McNeil felt close to snapping out of an underwhelming stretch that has now lasted half the season, with McNeil hitting .255 with a .657 OPS — down from .326 and .836 in 2022, respectively — after going 1-for4 with a double in Thursday night’s 3-2 loss to the Brewers.

He hit sixth and played second base.

McNeil’s hard-hit percentage has increased from 30.2 in 2022 (in MLB’s bottom 79 percent) to 33.9 entering his 80th game Tuesday night, per Statcast.

It’s his best clip since 2019, when he was a second-year player managing a full season for the first time.

He’s hit some balls hard,” hitting coach Jeremy Barnes told The Post. “He’s hitting the ball harder this year than he has the past couple of years, believe it or not.

“It’s just one of those weird things.”

Mets manager Buck Showalter referenced McNeil’s track record — as well as his daily conversations with the 31-year-old — as reasons for optimism that, at some point, he’ll shatter the disappointments of a slump and become an impactful presence in the lineup again.

McNeil’s average hovered just below .300 at the end of April.

It had only dropped to .288 when June arrived.

Then, the hitting issues began.

“You try not to over-verbalize things,” Showalter said. “Everybody’s got a theory. Everybody’s trying to help.

“And that’s one thing I’ve told him: You’re getting a lot of advice and this and that, whatever.”

That doesn’t mean McNeil has become a different hitter — even if his numbers suggest a drop-off, Barnes told The Post.

His strikeout rate has only changed by tenths of a percentage.

More contact has just turned into outs, evident by McNeil’s batting average on balls put in play (BABIP) dropping from .353 to .280, according to FanGraphs.

Barnes has worked with McNeil on his swing direction as a possible solution, ensuring that his path doesn’t include a slide underneath the baseball.

The process takes a delicate balance between feel and in-game application. It can be “tricky at times,” Barnes said.

But when McNeil starts driving the ball over the shortstop’s head, that’s a signal for everything clicking.

That’s when he resembles the hitter who used the contact-based approach to spark a career year at the plate.

That’s when the scoreboard numbers, finally, should start to normalize.

“There’s definitely frustration,” Barnes said. “There’s frustration from him. There’s frustration from me. But all we can really do at the end of the day is we can have a good process, control what we can control, work on the right things and just immerse ourselves in the process and do as much as we can.

“Hopefully the hits start falling.”