In the midst of a disastrous skid during what has been a disastrous Yankees season, manager Aaron Boone had a private chat with his team Friday night.

He wanted them to be prepared; he wanted his guys to be loose; he wanted the group to “come in with that edge” and have fun playing the game.

After Boone’s statement, his players made one of their own: This season likely is done.

Gerrit Cole, the Yankees’ stopper, was stomped.

Their bats were buzzed.

Boone could not breathe life into a flatlining offense as the Yankees were smacked around in an 8-1 loss to the Red Sox in front of 42,599 mostly apathetic fans in The Bronx on Saturday afternoon.

The spiral continued for the Yankees (60-63), who have lost seven straight, are a season-worst three games under .500 and are eight games out of an AL wild-card spot, after the Mariners, the team that holds that final spot, beat the Astros, 10-3.

The Yankees are beating no one and do not have a series victory in eight tries since they swept the Royals in July.

They certainly are not beating their chief rivals.

They have dropped seven of eight games against the Red Sox this year.

“I don’t recall experiencing anything like this before in my career,” said Cole, who allowed a season-worst six earned runs (all on a pair of home runs) in four innings. “How you handle adversity and how you get through it is really ultimately how you get judged.”

Hours before the game, Boone said he believed a “turnaround” was coming.

What followed was Yankees batters stepping to the plate and repeatedly turning around to head back to the dugout.

Boston starter Kutter Crawford recorded 16 outs before the Yankees recorded a hit, Aaron Judge breaking up the no-hit bid with a one-out home run in the sixth inning. The Yankees managed just one other hit, a meaningless single from Greg Allen in the seventh.

“We’re sick animals in a lot of ways,” Boone said of a club with a collapsed offense that has scored seven runs combined in its past five games. “It’s a grind of a sport.”

Judge, who smoked his 24th homer of the season in a game that already was lost, said he thought the offense got “a little passive” in allowing Crawford to jump ahead in counts.

Sometimes they took too many pitches.

Sometimes they tried too hard to make something happen, as when Isiah Kiner-Falefa attempted a bunt with lead-footed Giancarlo Stanton on first base in the second inning, but popped the ball up. Catcher Connor Wong caught it and doubled up Stanton at first.

“I know it hasn’t looked good at all, and we’re all not happy about it,” said Boone, who did not question his team’s work ethic or desire.

Yes, the Yankees are trying.

But the frustration might be working against them.

They did not take an at-bat with a runner in scoring position.

“You want to run through a brick wall, and that’s a tough way to go as a hitter,” Boone said. “You’ve got to be able to slow down and back off and control things.”

With this offense, any slip from the pitching staff gets magnified, and Cole found a few banana peels.

The ace, who entered with a 2.55 ERA in outings that followed a Yankees loss (games in which his club now is 9-3), picked a poor day to have his worst outing of the season.

It was not the Big, Bad Red Sox who stymied Cole, but the little-known Nos. 8 and 9 hitters.

In the second inning, Cole loaded the bases on two hits and a walk. With one out, last-place hitter Luis Urias swatted a first-pitch cutter for a grand slam, stunning the crowd and burying the home team. It only Urias’ third homer of the season, though it was his second grand-slam in two at-bats, after he hit one Thursday at Washington.

Two innings later, Wong blasted a two-run home run — just his eighth career homer — over the right-field wall.

“Just sloppy baseball all around,” Kiner-Falefa said on a day when the Yankees’ fielding burned them, too.

Boston’s seventh run came in the eighth inning, when a single and a catcher’s interference put two on for Pablo Reyes, whose routine fly ball became an RBI, ground-rule double because Allen — starting his first game since July 30 — lost it in the sun.

Hours before the game, Boone acknowledged the Yankees’ clubhouse was worn but said, “We’re OK.”

Yankees players then did their best to contradict him.