CINCINNATI — If a pitcher falls in the ballpark and everyone is too distracted by the pitcher’s teammates carrying the wood (bats), does he make a sound?

It turns into a moot question now. CC Sabathia made his fourth straight subpar start Tuesday night at Great American Ball Park. This game, under National League rules, his fellow lineup members didn’t do enough to cover for him. Hence the exposure of this currently weak link.

The Yankees’ six-game winning streak ended with a 5-3 loss to the Reds, and though Sabathia exhibited characteristic grit in throwing six innings, he deserved the loss. The Reds knocked him around for five runs, all in the second inning, and seven hits while drawing two walks and striking out twice.

Sabathia owns a 5.77 ERA and has allowed 22 earned runs over 20 ²/₃ innings in his last four starts, a 9.58 ERA. Nevertheless, the Yankees, at 21-10 still among the industry’s elite, won’t be looking for reasons to demote or diminish their oldest pitcher.

“Plenty,” Joe Girardi said, when asked how much patience he can have with Sabathia. Asked why, the Yankees’ manager said, “Because I’ve seen what he’s done. I saw what he did last year. I saw what he did his first three starts this year. So he’ll find it.”

In this stretch, it has been more a matter of the Yankees’ hitters finding their way around Sabathia’s ineffectiveness. The big lefty received bailouts by his American League-leading offense in each of his two prior starts, the April 28 game at Yankee Stadium in which the Yankees erased a 9-1 deficit to prevail, 14-11 in 11 innings, and May 3 in The Bronx, when the home team shrugged off a four-run top of the first to record an 8-6 victory.

That offense gives Sabathia and the Yankees some protection as the 36-year-old tries to solve this; it also doesn’t hurt he will avoid the dangerous Astros this weekend at Yankee Stadium and goes next Tuesday in Kansas City against the banjo-hitting Royals.

Too, Sabathia and Girardi expressed optimism over Sabathia’s rediscovery of his cut fastball, which he has lacked lately, after the killer second inning.

“I felt good throwing it later in the game,” Sabathia said of the cutter, which he throws inside to righty batters. “My changeup really kept me in it. That’s encouraging.”

On the flip side, you can find cause for discouragement. Girardi tried to deploy the “soft contact” trope that he used in other years, more accurately, to defend Sabathia’s struggles. Eh. The Reds tallied six singles in the second inning, and none of them could be construed as softies. Sabathia, to his credit, wouldn’t hear of such spin, saying, “That’s baseball. It is what it is. It’s up to me to make a pitch and get out of that inning.”

Furthermore, Sabathia’s strikeouts-to-walks ratio, the traditional underlying indicator, has shifted in the wrong direction. With 27 whiffs and 17 free passes, he has dropped in the former category and climbed in the latter.

Nevertheless, he has more than earned the right to keep going. To see if his cutter can carry over into Kauffman Stadium. Removing him from the rotation at this juncture is a discussion occurring only in the fake-news world of the faniverse.

Sabathia’s rough stretch should generate concern. We haven’t arrived at the alarmed phase yet. Even if the Yankees’ ninth-inning rally had produced another late victory instead of Gary Sanchez’s game-ending double-play lineout, though, Sabathia would be the topic of this column. He could hide behind team victories no longer. He knows more than anyone it’s time to get his team some wins, rather than the other way around.