This was not the way the Yankees wanted to get Austin Romine into a postseason game.

Their 16-1 loss to the Red Sox in Game 3 of the ALDS on Monday got so out of hand, bench coach Josh Bard approached the backup catcher in the dugout in the eighth inning and asked him if he could pitch.

“I said I’d sure as hell try,” said Romine, who hadn’t pitched since he played at El Toro High School in Lake Forest, Calif.

After Luis Severino didn’t record an out in the fourth, Lance Lynn was a disaster and Chad Green wasn’t much better. Jonathan Holder delivered two decent innings before rookie left-hander Stephen Tarpley pitched a brutal eighth and barely survived.

And so there was Romine, for the first time in his professional career, in front of a few thousand cold, wet fans who had watched the Yankees’ archrivals embarrass them in The Bronx with the worst loss in MLB postseason history.

So with the Yankees down by 13 runs in the ninth, Aaron Boone went to the backup catcher, and Romine was cheered wildly by the unfortunate few thousand who remained at the Stadium.

“Just try to get it over the plate,’’ Romine said of his approach on the mound with the game clearly out of hand. “Just try to get out of that inning and save the guys left in the pen.”

Romine only threw fastballs, as he called them: “Some slower, some harder … I would like to have fun with it, but really, I was just trying to get out of the inning.”

He eventually did.

Romine got Xander Bogaerts and Rafael Devers to ground out to start the inning but then walked Ian Kinsler.

That brought up Brock Holt, who needed a home run to become the first player to complete the cycle in a postseason game, and the second baseman smacked Romine’s pitch into the seats down the right-field line for the final runs of the game.

“We came here to win the game,” Romine said. “Obviously, that didn’t happen. I’m sure I’ll reflect on it and have some fun with it, but I was out there just trying to get through the inning.”

Christian Vazquez flied out to right to end the inning.

“I didn’t envision myself getting into these playoffs in that role,” said Romine, the first Yankees position player to take the mound since Brendan Ryan did it in 2015 against Houston. “But I’m here to try to help the guys.”

Romine also became the second position player to pitch in a postseason game — following Toronto’s Cliff Pennington, who pitched one-third of an inning in a loss to Kansas City in Game 4 of the 2015 ALCS — but he wanted to focus on the game.

“The big story is we didn’t get job done when needed to get it done,” Romine said. “And unfortunately, I had to pitch.’’