Well , it’s pretty simple what the Yankees must do from here, right?

Go on a roll, or else it’s Cole.

Unless the Yankees defeat the Astros, baseball’s winningest team in 2019, in the next three American League Championship Series games, they can’t reach their first World Series since 2009 without defeating (or at least outlasting) Gerrit Cole, the lifelong Yankees fan who just happens to be baseball’s finest pitcher of the moment, in a do-or-die Game 7 on Sunday night at Minute Maid Park.

Of course, right now the Yankees probably would agree to that devil’s bargain, as it would guarantee them not being eliminated by Game 7.

Welcome to the first crisis point of this Yankees postseason. While they moved their former draft pick and trade target Cole against the ropes a few times in ALCS Game 3 on Tuesday at Yankee Stadium, Aaron Boone’s guys couldn’t land a serious blow, thereby falling 4-1 to the Astros and slipping behind them, two games to one.

“It goes without saying that anytime you can target another day for him to pitch, it feels pretty good,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said of Cole. “I think he’s the best pitcher in baseball right now.

“Gerrit is locked in. And to see him do it on the big stage in a playoff game with the magnitude of this game, it was pretty awesome.”

“Obviously, tonight [my] fastball command was a bit of a struggle, and for some reason, it wasn’t early in the inning, it was more late in the inning,” Cole said. “I don’t really have a reason for that right now. But I know it will be better next time.”

Just what the Yankees want to hear, right? Cole, a co-favorite (with his Astros teammate Justin Verlander) for the 2019 AL Cy Young Award and an impending free agent, blanked the Yankees over seven innings despite walking a season-high five and permitting four hits. The Yankees placed runners in scoring position with two outs in four of the first five innings, and each time, Cole doused the fire. The Yankees went 0-for-6 against him with runners in scoring position, including Didi Gregorius’ memorable close-but-no-cigar, fifth-inning flyout to Josh Reddick at the right-field wall.

“I think we ended up with probably about nine base runners against him,” Boone said, correctly. “You kind of sign up for that. We weren’t able to break through.

“We weren’t able to get that hit tonight to really allow us to be in that game or even grab a lead at some point.”

The Yankees have problems, from Giancarlo Stanton’s strained right quadriceps that benched him for a second straight game to Adam Ottavino’s October implosion to Gary Sanchez looking more lost at the plate than Bobby and Cindy Brady did in the Grand Canyon. If rain postpones Wednesday night’s Game 4, they’ll face the prospect of playing the series’ final four games in four days knowing that they rely considerably more on their (excellent) bullpen than do the Astros, who deploy superior starting pitchers.

Perhaps even a perfectly put-together Yankees team still would’ve lost to Cole, however, joining quite a crowd. The 29-year-old has now registered 25 straight starts without being charged with a loss, and the Astros have won Cole’s last 15 starts.

Think the Yankees want to put their season on the line against those streaks? This dilemma naturally evokes memories of a different New York-Houston LCS, when the 1986 Mets wanted no part of facing alleged scuffer Mike Scott for a third time in Game 7 of the National League finals after falling to him in Games 1 and 4; Davey Johnson’s crew captured the pennant in Game 6 with the legendary, 16-inning, 7-6 triumph at the Astrodome.

The Yankees do not currently look like a team that can pull off such a preemptive strike, let alone topple the best arm in the game. And if they live up to that look, they’ll be watching Cole pitch again, from their respective homes, in the Fall Classic.