James Paxton struggles in the first inning, which doesn’t rank as altogether different than, say, Shake Shack founder Danny Meyer continually messing up the cheese fries. It’s a pretty vital skill to lack in the respective fields of work.

As fortune would have it, of the currently healthy Yankees starting pitchers, you might tab Paxton as the most likely to dominate a postseason opponent, with the stipulation that Masahiro Tanaka (experience) and Domingo German (2019 performance) also would be acceptable answers.

So in light of recent events, including Paxton’s lemon of a showing on a sweaty Sunday at Yankee Stadium, let’s flip the Yankees’ big question 90 degrees. “Can they land an October ace?” is so 2007 (Curt Schilling’s last season). Instead, the Yankees must self-evaluate through this prism:

Do they have their best 12?

With the trade market murkier than a foggy night on the Merritt Parkway, the Yankees must find arms options wherever they can in order to place 12 very good pitching options on their postseason roster. If that means extracting Marcus Stroman from the Blue Jays or a key reliever or two, then terrific.

If that means taking a flier on a little-known guy whom the analytics folks like as much as they liked Luke Voit a year ago, because contending teams like the Indians (Trevor Bauer), Giants (Madison Bumgarner) and Diamondbacks (Robbie Ray) won’t deal — with fingers crossed on the rehabilitating Luis Severino and Dellin Betances and rising Deivi Garcia — then that might have to work.

It’ll work as long as Aaron Boone, enjoying a bang-up sophomore season so far, feels confident enough in those choices that he’s willing to quickly jettison his starter if he looks like Paxton did in the Yankees’ series-closing 8-4 loss to the Rockies that stopped the team’s five-game winning streak.

“I think overall, he’s throwing the ball really well,” Boone said of Paxton, who allowed seven runs (four earned) and five hits in 3 ¹/₃ innings, walking three and fanning six, to lift his season ERA to 4.20. “And I view him as a guy we’re going to lean on heavily down the stretch, and hopefully in October.”

“I just need to find a way to minimize that damage in the first inning, because that’s going to be important moving forward,” Paxton said.

Actually, by allowing a leadoff homer to Charlie Blackmon and then retiring the next three batters, Paxton — the Yankees’ most exciting pitching acquisition of last offseason — lowered his 2019 first-inning ERA from 10.12 to 10.06, easily his worst frame. For his career, the southpaw now owns a 4.88 first-inning ERA, superior to how he fares in the third (4.92) and eighth (5.73).

Early-inning malaise, to steal from Boone’s predecessor Joe Girardi, is not what you want from a desired postseason stud. To be fair, this marked Paxton’s first stinker after three straight strong efforts (five runs over 18 innings) and four out of five (eight runs over 29 innings).

“Location,” Paxton explained, when asked why this game didn’t go as well. “I was falling behind. I wasn’t throwing strikes with my fastball. … I can’t walk that many guys. Giving up hits when I was behind in the count.”

“I think even some of his best outings, you kind of look back on them, he’s had a chance to get really deep in the game,” Boone said. “I think there’s been some at-bats where foul balls, or soft contact to extend a game where he’s pitched really well, haven’t allowed him to get as deep as he can or certainly we know he can.”

In this game, Boone could point to Luke Voit misplaying Tony Wolters’ third-inning bunt, then Aaron Hicks not quite coming up with Blackmon’s soft line drive to center field. Yet then, as Boone acknowledged, Paxton followed a Trevor Story strikeout by serving up a Nolan Arenado two-run double down the left-field line, no cheapie.

If stuff like that happens in October, then Boone has to display the quick hook he failed to utilize last October. The key will be to have guys who give you confidence when they enter the game, and to not sweat the exits.