Innings limits makes for strange bedfellows.

For while it isn’t exactly routine for the manager of the Yankees to empathize publicly with the manager of the Mets, that’s exactly what Joe Girardi did on Sunday when addressing the Matt Harvey imbroglio that pretty much sucked up all of the weekend’s New York baseball oxygen.

“I can only imagine what Terry [Collins] is going through,” Girardi said after taking his fourth or fifth question regarding the subject of innings limits in the press briefing that preceded the Yankees’ 6-4 victory over the Rays at the Stadium. “I’m glad I’m not going through it.”

Yet, but for the grace of an early-season Masahiro Tanaka forearm/wrist issue that sidelined him from April 23 to June 6 and a midseason Michael Pineda forearm injury that sidelined him from July 24 to Aug. 26, there would go Girardi, and the Yankees would be competing for the AL East title without the ability to fully employ 40 percent of their five-man rotation.

“I might be going through this on this side of town, yeah,” Girardi said, acknowledging the Tanaka and Pineda injuries could have been blessings in disguise. “I feel for everyone over there [with the Mets]. It’s tough.”

Girardi used the expression, “It’s tricky,” a half-dozen times in addressing the generic issue. He has had experience with it before with Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes. He is going to have to navigate through it next season with Luis Severino after the organization kept the 21-year-old rookie’s innings to a minimum in the minor leagues through the early months of the season by pulling him quickly from his starts.

“We talked about it in spring training, how they were going to manage it so that when he got here there wouldn’t be any limitations,” Girardi said of the young right-hander who has ascended to the upper echelon of the rotation since his Aug. 5 big league debut. “He went a lot of starts early on where he didn’t go very long and that’s how we did it.”

Oh, and by the way, do not expect to see Severino, who threw 113 minor league innings last year and is at 135 combined this year, pitching for the Yankees next April. Because when Girardi was asked how he would handle a hypothetical innings-limit case, the manager said, “I would sit him out the month of April so you don’t have this tough situation in September and October.”

Girardi dealt with innings-limits issues from the Yankees dugout. He was managing Chamberlain’s ill-fated innings-limit season in 2008. That was a year after the right-hander debuted under Joe Torre to the Joba Rules. Girardi also oversaw Hughes’ 2010 season that featured the type of soft innings-limit under which it had been presumed until Friday Harvey was operating.

That was the year general manager Brian Cashman said innings limits would not be applied in the postseason to Hughes, who had thrown 105 innings in 2009 and 176 in the 2010 regular season.

“It wouldn’t be fair to the other 24 guys fighting for a championship not to allow him to pitch then” Cashman said in August 2010. “There are no restrictions for the postseason. It’s a different animal. It’s all hand on deck.”

Note this, though: a) Hughes started three times in the playoffs, and was bombarded twice in the six-game ALCS loss to Texas while accumulating an additional 15 ²/₃ innings. You will note, though, that, a) Hughes was not coming off Tommy John, and b) was not represented by Boras.

Girardi was not piling on Harvey or Boras. He did not come down on either side. Indeed, the manager said that he understands the wisdom of innings limits.

“I buy into that,” he said. “I do.

“You just have to be more creative in your managing, is what it is,” Girardi said before back-to-back sixth-inning home runs from Brian McCann and Alex Rodriguez against Chris Archer allowed the Yankees to overcome a 3-0 deficit. “You have to have a lot of depth.”

You have to have a plan, is what you have to have. The Mets appeared to before Boras spoke up. The Yankees appear to have a plan in place for Severino next year.

But best of all for this season was the plan for Tanaka and Pineda to get hurt. Not really and not exactly, but on this side of town you call that the manager’s silver linings playbook.