If you didn’t already find James Paxton accessible and likable, perhaps this will help:

He finds baseball just as unwatchable as you do.

OK, that’s a purposely malicious misinterpretation of something the Big Maple shared with his audience Thursday afternoon at Yankee Stadium, minutes after Aaron Boone announced he would launch the Yankees’ 2019 postseason run by handing the ball to Paxton in Friday night’s ALDS Game 1. Yet Paxton’s revelation of his TV viewing habits this week shed an encouraging window into his frame of mind:

He knows what he can’t know, and he’s doing his best to make up the difference as he becomes the third Yankees pitcher in five years to make his major league postseason debut in the club’s playoff opener.

Humility sprinkled atop confidence can be a good thing.

“Luckily, a lot of [Yankees] players have had experience in the postseason,” Paxton said. “I’ve been talking to teammates and asking them what it’s like, what it’s like to pitch in the postseason. I’ve been watching the past two wild-card games. I’m going to watch the [NL Division Series] games [Thursday] just to watch what happens and kind of feel that emotion and try and learn something from those games.”

The follow-up question to Paxton, a drafted and developed Mariner whom the Yankees acquired in a trade last November, came naturally: Did he not watch October baseball in previous years?

“At times,” he responded. “I haven’t watched it as closely just because, when you’re out of it, you don’t really feel like watching more baseball. You’ve watched 162. It’s kind of like, all right, move on a little bit. Plus, it hurts a little bit to watch the teams play that are there.”

Kudos to the left-hander, who described his famous left glute as “a nonissue,” for both doing this and admitting to it. He shouldn’t be wasting a single brain cell on obfuscation or downplaying given the enormity of this assignment: He’ll try to prevail over the team that hit lefty pitching the best in the industry, an .872 OPS overall and an amazing .925 from their righty hitters. Paxton limited righty hitters to a .752 OPS this season.

“Executing pitches. That’s what it’s all about,” he said. “It’s staying out of the middle of the plate. If you make a mistake with a team like that, with (307) home runs … that just says they don’t miss them.”

“He’s the best left-handed pitcher in the game, in my opinion,” Aaron Judge said, “just based on the stuff he has and just his bulldog mentality on the mound.”

That bulldog mentality took some work. Paxton, whose ERA stood at an unwelcome 4.72 following a 10-7 Fenway Park shellacking by the Red Sox on July 26, conceded that New York “is different, it’s not easy,” and he needed some time to “get a good mental process going into games.”

He started throwing his curveball more after that Fenway game, and he later solved his first-inning problems by throwing more in the bullpen and being more aggressive; he put up a 2.51 ERA in his last 11 starts. And now he’s binge-watching the playoffs. That’s a problem solver for you.

“I feel like James is the guy to get us off on the right foot,” Boone said.

The Yankees’ other two announced starters can relate to Paxton’s circumstances. Game 2 starter Masahiro Tanaka recorded his postseason premiere in the Yankees’ 2015 AL wild-card game, allowing two runs in five innings as he lost to the Astros. Game 3 starter Luis Severino began his playoff career in the Yankees’ 2017 AL wild-card game, lasting just one-third of an inning and giving up three runs in a contest his team came back to win. In the Yankees’ other 18 postseason appearances of the wild-card era, they have gone initially to a pitcher with postseason experience.

Those small-sampled mixed results tell you little besides the fact that the Yankees have tried this before. It can’t hurt, though, that Paxton will be the first to tell you of his inexperience. Whether he becomes the first of this trio to win could go a long way in determining these Yankees’ success.