TORONTO — Even the mighty Yankees have an injury breaking point.
This latest Gary Sanchez groin injury could be the one that really hurts because the calendar will soon flip to October with real baseball and real competition ahead.
Advice to Yankees: Never give Sanchez a green light again in his career. He is too prone to injury. A simple run to second base Thursday when he was not being held at first, an attempted steal, caused this latest Sanchez situation.
Sanchez can hit a home run at any time and he can strain anything at any time. Unfortunately, Aaron Boone has to put Sanchez in bubble wrap the rest of his career.
Now the Yankees’ offense suffers.
Such was the case in a 6-5 loss to the Blue Jays on Friday night, when rookie Bo Bichette hit his first career walk-off home run to lead off the bottom of the 12th inning against Tyler Lyons.
The Yankees produced a five-run fifth but that was it.
“We just couldn’t get it going offensively,’’ Boone said.
Losing Sanchez’s big bat hurts, and he has shown he cannot do normal baseball activities like running.
Backup catcher Austin Romine continues to improve as a hitter and calls a marvelous game, but it is a lot to ask to fill Sanchez’s hitting shoes come the playoffs. Romine lashed two singles Friday night, his fourth straight multi-hit game, and is batting .360 since the start of July.
The Yankees have made Next Man Up their mantra, but eventually they are going to hit a situation in which the Next Man Up is not good enough.
At some point, the war of attrition takes a heavy toll.
Perhaps the Yankees are a team that can overcome every injury with their incredible depth. But when is enough enough?
That’s why it was a smart decision by Boone not to have Aaron Judge in the starting lineup against the Blue Jays after Judge ran hard into the right field wall on Thursday in Detroit.
Precaution must rule the day the rest of the way for the Yankees.
It was kind of fitting that it was Zombie Night at Rogers Centre and the Yankees were exhausted having played 30 innings the past two days on the road.
As for Sanchez, he had blasted five home runs over his past 11 games and has already set the Yankees’ season record for home runs by a catcher with 34. Sanchez, who passed his own record of 33, set in 2017, is a special hitter. He also is the second-fastest player to 100 home runs in major league history.
When The Post asked Boone how disturbing it is to lose Sanchez to such a standard play — running to second base while not being held at first — he offered a telling answer.
“It’s frustrating,’’ Boone said. “He’s such an important player to us, you see a guy go down and get a little dinged up. Even though it doesn’t change us and how we go about things and what our expectations are, I still get frustrated when we lose key players. But it’s also part of it. And unfortunately for us it has been a big part of it this year, but we’ve also shown we can manage it and in this case hoping that it is not something that keeps him out for the entire season.’’
Boone has shown remarkable resilience in leading these Yankees this year, in which are 45 games over .500. He did not want to get into a guessing game over when Sanchez will return to the lineup. Who can blame him?
All he would offer was that this groin strain was “similar to his last one.’’
Sanchez had a calf strain and a groin strain earlier this year. The groin strain kept him on the IL from July 24 to Aug. 10. If this is the same rehab time, Sanchez will be back for the postseason — but how effective will he be?
No matter how many injuries the Yankees have overcome — and the good news on this night was Luis Severino finally will pitch Tuesday — this one hurts.
If Sanchez’s swing is not in playoff form come the ALDS, that is when the real pain from this injury will be felt.
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