The most action the Yankees got around home plate Thursday was the few minutes Aaron Boone spent near there while arguing his ejection in the third inning.

The rest of the night, it was largely a black hole for Boone’s hitters.

The Yankees mustered just three hits and narrowly avoided a shutout before scoring in the ninth inning, but still fell to Kyle Gibson and the Orioles in a 3-1 loss in The Bronx.

With the lifeless offensive performance, the Yankees (30-22) dropped the rubber game against the division rival Orioles (33-17) to slow some of the momentum they had come home with from their strong road trip last week.

“For as well as we’ve been swinging the bat, it was just one of those nights where you gotta give the other team credit,” said Boone, who spent the final 6 ½ innings watching from inside after getting tossed for arguing home-plate umpire Edwin Moscoso’s strike zone. “Gibson was able to hold us down.”

Gibson, the veteran right-hander who entered the night with a 6.75 ERA in 10 career starts against the Yankees, threw seven shutout innings and gave up just two singles before handing a 3-0 lead over to the bullpen.

The Yankees got to Yennier Cano in the ninth, when Aaron Judge walked and later scored on a two-out double from Willie Calhoun, who had two of their three hits. But the rally was short-lived, with Anthony Volpe flying out to end the game.

After giving up a leadoff single to Gleyber Torres in the first inning, Gibson went on to retire 17 of the next 21 batters — the only four batters who reached doing so on walks — until Calhoun singled to lead off the seventh.

The Yankees failed to make him pay for the walks.

“He did a really good job of just mixing different parts of the zone with multiple pitches,” said Harrison Bader, who was the only Yankee to reach second base until Judge and Calhoun in the ninth. “When a guy is working outside of where you might be looking in a particular at-bat, he’s difficult to square up. A lot of balls just off the barrel.”

Clarke Schmidt, in his first start since a sticky-stuff scare last Friday in Cincinnati, turned in a solid outing, giving up just one run over five innings on a season-high-tying 97 pitches.

Limiting an Orioles lineup that had gotten to Gerrit Cole and Nestor Cortes over the first two games of the series, Schmidt has now given up two runs or fewer in four of his last five starts.

The Orioles added a pair of runs in the eighth inning off Wandy Peralta and Clay Holmes. Peralta walked two batters before Holmes entered and gave up a double off the top of the right-field wall to Austin Hays that made it 3-0 Baltimore.

Those insurance runs proved to be the difference on a night when the Yankees’ lineup struggled to put much of anything together.

Volpe, who went 0-for-4 with a strikeout, came up with at least one runner on base in three of his at-bats but could not deliver a big hit.

With runners on first and second and two outs in the fourth, he grounded out.

He struck out with Calhoun on first base in the seventh and then flew out to end the game with Calhoun on second.

The rookie shortstop, who also misplayed a grounder up the middle in the first inning that helped extend Schmidt’s pitch count, is 4-for-34 with 14 strikeouts and three walks over his last 10 games.

“Probably finding himself a little bit behind in the count,” Boone said. “Hasn’t walked as much lately. I think just part of it. But nothing I’m seeing that he’s too far off, even though it has been a little bit of a struggle. He’s doing enough up there to put himself in position to have success. A couple good at-bats in there in some important spots that he just hasn’t gotten rewarded for it.”