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BOSTON — So much for stepping on necks.

A night after Jazz Chisholm Jr. said that was what the Yankees were aiming to do down the stretch, they had an opportunity to actually do it by finishing off a sweep of the Red Sox.

Instead, Will Warren dug them an early hole that they could not climb all the way out of, ending an otherwise strong weekend with a 6-4 loss to the Red Sox on Sunday night at Fenway Park.

Warren got ambushed for six runs in the first inning while Garrett Crochet struck out 12 across six innings, allowing the Red Sox (82-68) to salvage the finale and pull back to within 1 ¹/₂ games of the Yankees (83-66) for the top AL wild card.

“I think it’s just baseball sometimes, as much as it sucks, because tonight felt like a big one — we needed to get the sweep there,” said Warren, who threw four scoreless innings after the brutal first.

The Yankees, despite making things interesting late, dropped to four games back of the Blue Jays in the AL East with 13 to play. Their chances of winning the division are getting slimmer by the day, now having to make up five games because the Blue Jays own the head-to-head tiebreaker — making it even likelier the Yankees could end up seeing the Red Sox again in the wild-card series after finishing 4-9 against them in the regular season.

Sunday marked the end of the Yankees’ 12-game gauntlet against four contending teams, which they came out of 7-5 — a record anyone would have signed up for going into it, even if it ended on a sour note.

“I think it’s a good stretch for us, especially facing four good teams in a row,” said José Caballero, who homered in the seventh while starting his fifth straight game at shortstop over Anthony Volpe. “It has a lot to say about this team. We’re ready for playoffs.”

Manager Aaron Boone was less interested in making much of the challenging stretch.

“I don’t evaluate it,” Boone said. “We get into Minnesota here late and we got another playoff game [Monday]. That’s how I look at it.”

Down 6-0 after the first inning, the Yankees at least made a game out of it.

Amed Rosario, in the lineup because of his ability to hit left-handed pitching, delivered a two-run shot that just slipped over the Green Monster in the fourth inning. He ended the night 6-for-9 in his career off Crochet.

In the fifth, Aaron Judge drilled his 48th home run of the year, a solo shot into the Red Sox bullpen. It marked his fifth home run in his past six games, coming after he had struck out in each of his first two at-bats against Crochet.

And then in the seventh, Caballero demolished a 423-foot shot onto Lansdowne Street off lefty reliever Steven Matz to pull the Yankees within 6-4.

When Judge led off the eighth with a single against Garrett Whitlock, it felt like the Yankees might actually pull off the comeback. But Whitlock, the former Yankees farmhand, responded by striking out Cody Bellinger, Giancarlo Stanton and pinch-hitter Trent Grisham in succession to squash the threat.

“Boys did a really good job battling back, having tough at-bats — no easy task against Crochet, but we kind of give ourselves a chance there late with keeping the pressure on them,” Boone said.

Warren’s night began by allowing five straight hits — the first a triple by Jarren Duran that Stanton had trouble tracking down in front of the Green Monster. Even the first two outs Warren recorded drove in a run each, on a sacrifice fly and groundout, before ex-Yankee Carlos Narváez capped off the barrage with a home run that made it 6-0.

To his credit, Warren settled in after the brutal start and ended up pitching five innings to spare the bullpen in the midst of a 13-day, 13-game stretch. But in three games against the Red Sox this season, he has a 9.42 ERA (15 earned runs in 14 ¹/₃ innings).

“They’re scrappy, I think you saw that tonight,” said Warren, who also gave up seven runs in the first inning against the Blue Jays on July 2. “I don’t know how many ground ball base hits they had, but they’re going to put together good at-bats, make you throw a lot of pitches, and they’re not going to deviate from their plan.”