Baseball’s final weekend of the regular season, Tavern on the Green in the contending teams’ sights if they were running the New York City Marathon, presents a series of micro-dilemmas for various competitors who must decide, essentially, how hard to try to win.

The Rays, caught in bad traffic on the way from their Manhattan hotel to Yankee Stadium, find themselves in such a conundrum.

With their playoff lot settled as the top American League seed and with their opponent very much unsettled (the Yankees, despite sitting in strong position, entered Friday’s series opener with nothing clinched), how much should the Rays press on the gas against the Yankees, whom they very well might face in next week’s AL Division Series?

The answer seems to be, aggressively enough to honor the spot while not so ardently that they risk their own October fates.

“I don’t foresee us managing really any differently,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said Friday afternoon. “We will watch our pitcher workloads. We’re certainly not going to run our position players into the ground. Brandon [Lowe] is off today, he’ll be right back in there [Saturday].

“But you want to respect the game, that’s for sure. We’re going to respect the game, the situation, the magnitude of what’s at stake for all of these teams.”

For sure, the Rays owed it to the Red Sox, Mariners and Blue Jays — to all of Major League Baseball, in other words — to make a reasonable effort to prevail. The “reasonable” line gets drawn where Cash indicated: He won’t wear out any of his players, be they pitchers or everyday guys. He won’t rest them excessively, though.

If he so desired, Cash could look back to a Yankees-Rays series in which the roles were flipped, at the end of 2011. The Yankees had clinched the AL East, whereas the Rays were fighting for their lives. In Game 162, Joe Girardi, the Yankees’ manager, utilized 11 pitchers, only five of whom pitched in the subsequent ALDS loss to the Tigers. Girardi also got nearly all of his regulars four plate appearances. The Yankees blew a 7-0 lead in the final two innings and wound up losing, 8-7 in the 12th inning, when Evan Longoria slugged a walk-off homer against Scott Proctor, who never threw another pitch in the major leagues.

Yankees manager Aaron Boone, asked what he expected of the Rays’ weekend efforts, said: “I would expect them to come in here and want to win these games. I’m sure if there’s anything that they’re worried about with any guys physically, they’ll probably be cautious in those areas. But I’m sure they’re out to come beat us, especially knowing that they’re going to have a few days before their first game where they get their kind of layoff.”

The Rays indeed will enjoy three days off, with ALDS Game 1 scheduled for Thursday at Tropicana Field. The possibility Game 1 could be against the Yankees, should they advance out of the wild-card round, entered Cash’s thinking, too.

“I’m sure the Yankees are looking to take something from us [informationally],” Cash said “and we’ll probably look to take something from them as far as if we do meet up again.”

Remember, should we get a rematch of last year’s ALDS, it’ll feature a dramatically different setting.

“I think we’re going to look at it as, last year postseason baseball was played without fans. There weren’t fans until the World Series,” Cash said. “I’m guessing this place, with New York’s great fans, it’s going to get loud here. We’ll embrace that moment and learn from it with a bunch of our young players.”

Or the Rays could do their part to ensure they won’t return to The Bronx until 2022. Yet it seems clear that won’t be the top priority this weekend, which goes down as good news for the Yankees.