TORONTO — I’m bullish on the Yankees using an opener in the playoffs, although that stems from a bearishness on their actual starting pitchers.

I’ve changed my perspective on this because the Yankees’ starters haven’t sufficiently changed their performances.

You might consider this an odd time to float this idea, since Saturday afternoon marked the 2019 Yankees’ first loss in 12 times deploying an opener. Yet even in this game, a 5-4 defeat to the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre, opener Chad Green did his job by tossing a shutout first inning, and his successors Stephen Tarpley (two runs in 2 ¹/₃ innings) and Chance Adams (one run in 1 ²/₃ innings) kept the Yankees in the game. Their second straight loss resulted from Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s first career triple, a defensive swing on an 0-2 fastball from Adam Ottavino that stayed just fair inside the first-base line and rolled far into right field.

“No excuses,” Ottavino said. “I’ve got to get it done and didn’t tonight.”

Good for him for owning what went down, but that was one fluky hit on a weird day in which the Blue Jays also used an opener, former Met Wilmer Font. In fact, this second straight Yankees loss, while ugly in many ways — the Yankees pitchers issued eight walks! — nevertheless goes into the “Good process, bad results” file. And given how many wins the Yankees have rescued from poor starting-pitching performances, I’ll take my chances on the better process come October.

I’m not saying they should go with an opener for American League Division Series Game 1, nor for more than one time per series. That would take too much of a toll on the pitching staff. Once per series, though? As things stand now, it seems like a slam dunk.

Asked before the game whether the opener strategy could be utilized by the Yankees, Aaron Boone sounded very open to the idea.

“It could, sure,” he said. “I think it could.”

Boone pointed out, as he has in the past, that some of the Yankees’ victories in opener games can be attributed to strong hitting rather than stellar pitching. However, when you add up the Yankees’ deviceful dozen, their 12 games of opener assignments, you get 53 runs permitted, which averages out to 4.42 runs allowed per game. Now guess, without peeking, how many Yankees starting pitchers own an ERA of 4.42 or better. You are correct: Two, Domingo German (4.05) and James Paxton (4.40).

Those are probably the two guys whom you’d feel most comfortable giving the ball to at this point. Then you get to the big ifs and bigger ifs: While Masahiro Tanaka’s playoff history makes him compelling, his recent results add considerable worry to the calculus. Luis Severino has miles to go in his rehabilitation effort before he can be a serious candidate. J.A. Happ must pitch far better, and no one knows how much the currently injured CC Sabathia has left to give.

Some of these ifs could be part of the bullpenning mix, be they openers or second men in so that they can avoid the top of the opponent’s order the first time through. They can replace second-tier guys like Tarpley and Adams. Yet at this juncture, you couldn’t count on two of these guys providing anything approaching a traditional start. You’ll have to find one to accompany German and Paxton, then go with the opener in the fourth game.

Underdogs against the Astros, the Yankees will have to use every trick they’ve got. The opener has turned out to be a pretty good trick for them. Barring a widespread rotation renaissance, the Yankees should dance with the one-inning pitcher that brought them here.