If the Yankees are going to save their season, they are going to have to do it with almost all the same players that has them sitting in last place in the AL East.

The MLB trade deadline came and went Tuesday and the Yankees largely stood pat aside from making a pair of fringe additions in rental reliever Keynan Middleton and Triple-A right-hander Spencer Howard.

General manager Brian Cashman said the Yankees were initially “opportunistic buyers” and “opportunistic sellers,” but then when the team stumbled out of the gates in the second half, they “became more cautious buyers.”

He also determined that selling was not worth the potential returns that teams were offering, so the end result was mostly doing nothing.

“We could have taken a wrecking ball to it, but I honestly felt based on the opportunities that presented themselves that that didn’t make any sense whatsoever,” Cashman said Tuesday night during the Yankees’ 5-2 loss to the Rays. “That kind of forced us into a double-down, 3 ½ games out [of the final playoff spot], let’s double down and go for it.”

Before adding Middleton from the White Sox (for 21-year-old right-hander Juan Carela) and Howard (for cash considerations), the Yankees had been the only team in the majors not to make a trade since July 1.

Stuck in last place in the AL East entering the day and tied for sixth in the wild-card race — 3 ½ games out of the third and final wild-card spot — the Yankees opted not to go all-in as either a buyer or seller.

“You’d rather be obviously in a more defined spot where we’d be 3 ½ games up in the postseason or 10 games back,” Cashman said. “It’d give you a clearer picture, but that’s not where we’ve put ourselves.”

Cashman’s inaction means that the Yankees will be banking on their underperforming veterans — namely Giancarlo Stanton, Anthony Rizzo and DJ LeMahieu — returning to form, plus the returns of a less-than-100 percent Aaron Judge, left-hander Nestor Cortes and reliever Jonathan Loaisiga giving them a spark over the final two months of the season if they are to have any hope of making the playoffs.

“Obviously we’re in it to win it,” Cashman said.

Except the Yankees have yet to offer any kind of consistency that would suggest they are capable of winning it.

They went 19-23 while Judge spent nearly two months on the injured list and then entered Tuesday 1-3 since he came off the IL.

The Yankees, who entered the season without an established left fielder and still do not have one, have continued to scuffle offensively even with Judge back in the lineup.

While Cashman said he hoped Stanton, Rizzo and LeMahieu were “saving the best baseball for the last two months,” he also said that there was not a big acquisition to be made “that was going to solve the immediate problems we had.”

So instead of tearing it down or at least selling off the Yankees’ pending free agents, Cashman decided to give the current roster two more months to show it could live up to expectations.

“I do think we do have the talent and the capabilities,” Cashman said. “Saying it is one thing. Watching it lately hasn’t been anything close to what you’d feel comfortable with. But we had to measure that with the options that were presented to us.”

As other teams around them in the AL East and wild-card chase made trades to bolster their playoff pushes, the Yankees largely stood by and hoped their improvements could come from within.

“We’re here because we’ve played poorly,” Cashman said. “We underperformed in some cases and had some bad injuries. That’s why we’re at where we’re at right now. We were counting on more. So if those are decisions that fall on me, they’re on me.”