The matchup was a pretty skeevy one to begin with, the Yankees out of the All-Star break opting to go with Domingo German against Noah Syndergaard in Friday’s opener of the three-game Subway Series against the Mets.

And that skeevy turned ugly when German was driven from the box in the fourth inning trailing by three runs en route to a 7-5 defeat in The Bronx. It was a development that doesn’t exactly set up the rest of the series for the Yankees, who will send Sonny Gray to the mound Saturday against Steven Matz before Masahiro Tanaka faces Jacob deGrom on Sunday.

It is not all that often a team on pace to win more than 100 games seems to be on the wrong side of all three matchups against a club already contemplating its tragic number. That, however, is the reality the Yankees are facing, and it is one just as stark as the 5 ¹/₂-game distance between them and the first-place Red Sox.

Brian Cashman has work to do beyond optioning German — who has pitched to a 6.79 ERA in his 12 starts following his dazzling six-inning no-hit performance against Cleveland on May 6 — to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre as the general manager did immediately following Friday’s game. More work, too, than filling German’s spot in the rotation with Luis Cessa, as the team will in another five days.

Because while the Yankees are made to outhit and outlast just about everybody, the task becomes much greater when it includes outlasting the team’s own starting rotation. Mind you, the starters have compiled an ERA that’s around the middle of the AL pack, so it is not the stuff of folly to believe that a unit fronted by Luis Severino and CC Sabathia can take this group to the postseason.

Indeed, Aaron Boone could have thrown Sabathia in this one and then gone with Severino — who pitched one inning in Tuesday’s All-Star Game — on Sunday. That would have skewed this weekend’s matchups differently. But the manager chose to take the long view and give his top two extra rest. When Severino pitches at Tampa Bay on Monday, he will have had 10 days’ rest between starts. When Sabathia goes the following night, he will have had nine days’ rest.

The long view now seems to include a nine-inning wild-card knockout round. Yes, indeed there are 66 games to go that include 10 against Boston, so it is hardly time to wave white flags. But the fact is, the Yankees have gone just 12-12 since June 22 and have lost 7 ¹/₂ games in the standings, while the Sox have rolled at 19-4.

“This is about us. We have to go out and perform and get our ship right,” Boone said. “I can’t look at the scoreboard and will it the other way. We have to take care of our house.”

The Yankees persisted Friday after having fallen behind 3-0 six Mets batters into the game and 6-1 halfway through. They put 19 men on base, had the tying run at the plate in the seventh, on third base with two out in the eighth and then again at the plate in the ninth, but could not come up with the blow that would have turned this one all the way around.

“They made pitches when they had to, with Syndergaard and the guys who came after,” Aaron Judge said. “When it mattered, we didn’t get the job done.”

The job now falls on Cashman, tasked with getting a difference-making pitcher between now and the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline. An incremental improvement at the bottom of the rotation would help, but if the Yankees are destined to play wild-card baseball, they will need more than that.

For if the Yankees are able to survive the knockout round with Severino on the mound, they will require a big-time arm to match up against Chris Sale — perhaps twice — in the best-of-five ALDS. That, of course, was the job description reserved for Gray following last year’s deadline acquisition. It no longer appears to fit.

If such a high-reward pitcher is unattainable — is it not time to at least consider a deal for Cincinnati’s Matt Harvey? — Cashman might instead attempt to fortify his formidable bullpen. Kansas City, after all, won the 2015 World Series with a rotation that is inferior to the one the Yankees currently have.

But the Royals did not have to go through the 2018 Red Sox and the 2018 Astros. That’s the challenge for the Yankees. It seems a tall one for a team that seems to be on the wrong end of three straight starting pitching matchups against the Mets.