Following first round, score it a technical KO

BOSTON — For the first two-thirds of Thursday night’s game at Fenway Park, you could have initiated a pretty strong argument about just which phase of the Yankees was the worst — their starting pitching, their offense or their defense.

In what is now a two-week-old season, the Yankees have done a poor job of harmonizing the team. There has been enough failure in one area or another — the bullpen or the base running or the ability to deliver in the clutch to sabotage the possibility of a strong start to this season.

But in the finale against the Red Sox — with a chance to win the first series of 2018 against their expected main AL East rival — the Yankees assembled the opposite of a masterpiece. They were not undermined by one area. This was systemic failure.

Sonny Gray could not locate, finish off hitters or find common ground in pitch selection with Gary Sanchez. That left him needing his defense more than ever, but Sanchez had difficulty corralling a hard-to-catch pitcher (three wild pitches) and Giancarlo Stanton and Tyler Wade each botched plays. And until Aaron Judge opened the seventh with a double, Rick Porcello was no-hitting the Yankees.

“We’ll turn the page,” Aaron Boone said after a 6-3 loss.

He actually has been saying that a lot in the early chapters. The Yanks are now two weeks and one Rivalry series into this season and they are distinctly disappointing.

They were generally viewed as the AL East favorites this year, predicted to hop over the two-time defending division-champ Red Sox. But what was expected on paper or in Vegas sports books has yet to transpire.

Instead, with a chance to reverse both their early meh play and the Red Sox’s strong opening surge, the Yankees behaved like the second-best team in the series. Boston took two of three and even in winning the tension-filled middle game the Yankees had a sense of hanging on despite scoring 10 runs.

Early in the finale the Yankee performance was so sub-standard that they looked in need of a mercy rule — and nearly got it with a rain delay after five innings. Alas, it lasted just 45 minutes. When play resumed, the Yanks eventually got a hit to stretch to 59 years, six months, 23 days and counting since they last were no-hit over nine innings by a singular pitcher (Hoyt Wilhelm in 1958).

They scored three runs in the ninth. But that was against Marcus Walden — the last man in the Red Sox pen. Craig Kimbrel entered, went 1-2-3 and the Yankees were 6-7 and the Red Sox 10-2.

There are five more series between the teams and 149 more games for the Yankees to rewrite all of this.

But they will need to actually, you know, play well to do this. One term Boone uses regularly is “button up,” as in to take care of the small details and the large ones will follow. But there have been mental lapses on the bases and in this loss a bunch of sketchy defense. Does that fall on a new manager? It is too early to know. But the Yankees have not yet been buttoned up this year.

In the finale there was the actual rain delay and the human version in the slow-working Gray. More and more, he echoes A.J. Burnett as a Yankee in that his stuff is praised, but the results don’t match the stuff.

“I feel like it will turn around for him,” Boone said. And it felt like something Joe Girardi said quite a bit about Burnett.

Gray joined Luis Severino and Masahiro Tanaka — the prime-aged top-three starters in this rotation — in getting brutalized at Fenway: 17 runs on 22 hits in 13 innings.

The Yanks were going to need high-end work from their defense and offense to overcome Gray and got neither. Gleyber Torres might soon need to be summoned, and not only to replace the drowning Wade, but maybe to provide energy and urgency.

Perhaps it is just an early-season malaise, fostered to some degree by cold weather and a spate of injury. But the Yankees are not yet honoring elevated expectations, forged by their feel-good run to ALCS Game 7 last year and the offseason add of Stanton. The arrow seemed pointed upward — as in at least flying by the Red Sox in the AL East.

But Boston — under its own rookie manager, Alex Cora — has matched the best 12game start in franchise history. The Red Sox also had the upper hand in a series that will be remembered for two benches/bullpenclearing altercations in the middle game.

And also for this — Boston being better.