The line in the boxscore may not quite reflect it, but Gerrit Cole essentially pitched to the assignment with which he was tasked on Saturday at the Stadium, with the Yankees a defeat away from falling into a 3-0 hole to the hated — and superior — Astros in the ALCS.

But then, the Yankees could have thrown a four-armed monster of Whitey Ford, Ron Guidry, David Cone and Allie Reynolds at Houston and it would not have mattered, unless baseball savants could devise a way to win a game without scoring a run.

There is fear and loathing in Mr. Judge’s neighborhood following the 5-0 Game 3 defeat in The Bronx that left the Yankees on the verge of extinction as soon as Sunday. There is fear of a sweep and loathing of the Houston team that is to this generation of Yankees what the Casey Stengel Yankees were to the Brooklyn Dodgers many decades ago, even if that was more about envy than hatred. The Dodgers were forced to wait ’til next year after 1949 and 1952 and 1953. They waited until next year arrived in 1955.

Now the Yankees, waiting ’til next year … after year, after year, after year … since their last World Series title in 2009, will have to wait one more day to try and get so much as a single victory over their tormentors, who fair, square and otherwise, previously eliminated them from postseason play in 2015, 2017 and 2019.

Cole was not ready to leave the mound when manager Aaron Boone came to get him with the bases loaded and none out in the sixth inning with the score 2-0 against. He was not ready to leave his season behind after having thrown just 96 pitches that, by the right-hander’s estimation, included “two-and-a-half mistakes,” one of which No. 9 hitter Chas McCormick deposited 335 feet away in the right field stands with a man on and two out in the second inning.

No, not a soul on the home side pointed out that the blow — which followed a muff in right-center by Harrison Bader, caused by an intersection of miscommunication and bad luck involving Aaron Judge — would not have gone out in Houston.

The Yankees need to play pristine ball to beat the Astros. They did not play pristine ball in Game 3.

The debatable call by Boone to remove Cole (the kind that adds up in the postseason) became academic when the Yankees could not push so much as a single run across the plate during a night when they had one hit through the first 8 ²/₃ innings.

“I felt like I was pitching like myself. I was mostly surprised,” said Cole, who had essentially saved the Yankees’ season six days earlier with a clutch outing in Game 4 against Cleveland in the ALDS. “I was just not ready to come out.”

There hadn’t been much hard contact in the inning. A walk and a flare that dropped into short right followed a hard-hit double to left. Boone had a choice between sticking with his ace or giving the ball to a reliever. He chose the latter, calling on Lou Trivino.

“I was hoping to get Gerrit through there. I felt like he threw the ball incredibly well,” Boone said. “I got Trivino up just in case he needed some help there with the bottom righties that we liked him against but obviously the way it turned out, it didn’t work for us.”

The bases were cleared two batters into Trivino’s stint after a sac fly and a two-run single. Cole, who received a warm reception on his way back to the dugout as a residue of good will from his performance against the Guardians, finished with five runs against (three earned) on five hits in five-plus innings while striking out seven. Trivino, with no such reservoir of good feelings, was booed after the inning.

“I’m about as frustrated as you can get,” Cole said. “You have to pitch with a shutout mentality. There are always going to be a handful of pitches that tip the balance in playoff baseball.”

The pitches that tipped the balance were thrown by Cole and then by Trivino, not by Houston starter Cristian Javier, who allowed one hit over 5 ¹/₃ innings, nor by the five Astros relievers who followed.

If you want to make the case that the Yankees might have been able to fight back had Cole remained in and wriggled out of the jam, well, you would sound like an individual talking about open roofs and exit velocity.

The Yankees have amassed 12 hits over three games, which includes a pair of two-out ninth-inning singles Saturday. They cut their strikeouts down to 10 after racking up 17 and 13, respectively, in Houston. Whoop-de-do. All that tends to make Boone’s decision to lift Cole rather immaterial.

The Yankees will turn to Nestor Cortes on Sunday to avoid red-faced humiliation. This is not about banging the drum slowly. Neither is it about a buzzer beater.

This is about waiting ’til next year. Again.