TORONTO — Unlike the contest taking place hours earlier at Citi Field, this did not feel like a do-or-die ballgame for the New York nine Wednesday night at Rogers Centre.

While the Yankees lost, 7-2 to the Blue Jays, it didn’t feel too terrible for the visitors, who saw their two-game winning streak end. Rather than this being a crucial tilt, the results left the Yankees with a crucial question for the club’s long-term well-being: Can Michael Pineda build off this quality start and find some level of consistency?

“I want to keep being positive all of the time,” Pineda said after taking the loss. “I’m working hard to be ready for my next start and doing the best on the mound.”

“I thought he threw the ball pretty well tonight,” manager Joe Girardi said of Pineda. “… Pretty good offense here. I thought he did a good job.”

Pineda threw six innings, just the second Yankee (after CC Sabathia) to reach that length, and he allowed three runs (two earned), giving up five hits and striking out six. His three walks marked the most free passes he has issued in 42 starts as a Yankee and his highest total in a major league game since Aug. 15, 2011, when he walked four Blue Jays at Safeco Field while pitching for the Mariners. Two of the walks — former Yankee Russell Martin in the second and Justin Smoak in the fifth — came around to score.

“I tried to throw strikes and missed spots,” Pineda said.

You cut Pineda some slack, though, because, as Girardi alluded, he was taking on the fiercest offense in baseball. He did his job by keeping the Yankees in the game, and a fifth-inning throwing error by reserve shortstop Ronald Torreyes led to Toronto’s final run against Pineda. The Yankees just couldn’t hit remade lefty J.A. Happ, the Blue Jays’ starter who carried a career 4.85 ERA against these guys from nine prior starts, and after Mark Teixeira’s eighth-inning homer drew the Yankees within 3-2, sixth-starter Ivan Nova gave back that run and three more with an ugly bottom of the eighth, withdrawing all suspense from the ninth inning.

Pineda’s performance dropped his ERA from 10.80 to 6.55, an indication of just how poorly the right-hander pitched in his initial start April 6 against Houston. The Astros knocked him around for six runs in five innings, a particularly discouraging showing given how dominant Pineda had looked in Grapefruit League action.

This is the story of Pineda’s baseball life: More teasing than pleasing, flashes of brilliance followed by spurts of utter hittability. Despite John Sterling protestations about baseball’s lack of predictability, the sum total of Pineda’s early effort has been rather predictable.

It’s at least trending positively for the moment, though.

“I felt very good tonight,” Pineda said. “Stronger.”

The progress has arrived in small doses since his career-threatening right shoulder surgery in 2012. He returned to game action in 2013, albeit only in the minor leagues. He made his Yankees debut in 2014 and recorded an outstanding 1.89 ERA in 13 starts … while missing the rest of the season with a right shoulder injury as well as a suspension for openly deploying pine tar on his neck.

Last year, Pineda more than doubled his workload to 27 starts … and more than doubled his ERA to 4.37.

The Yankees slotted him as their second starter this season, right behind ace Masahiro Tanaka, with the urgent hope Pineda could live up to such a billing. A night like Wednesday’s exemplified why they felt that way. Now if Pineda can just stay healthy and stay in games, the Yankees might finally get what they envisioned acquiring back in January 2012. And that could lead to the sort of do-or-die games you really want to play — in October.