NEW YORK – If you wanted to downplay a pressure-packed moment, you might say that it’s not like facing Shohei Ohtani in the World Series.

And if you wanted to emphasize the stakes of a given game, you might say that it’s not like facing Kansas City on a Wednesday in mid-April.

That’s a little unfair to the Royals, a playoff team last season, but you get the idea. We’re talking about extremes – specifically, Clarke Schmidt’s last game and his next one.

Schmidt will make his first start of the season for the Yankees on Wednesday, one month after he was scratched from a spring training outing with shoulder soreness. The Yankees had already lost Gerrit Cole for the season with Tommy John surgery, and Luis Gil for months with a high-grade lat strain.

They’ve since put the struggling Marcus Stroman on the injured list with left knee inflammation, and began this week’s Kansas City series with the worst starters ERA in the majors. After Max Fried’s 4-2 victory on Tuesday, it’s now 4.98.

Take out Fried, who worked 6 ⅔ strong innings, and the Yankees’ rotation has a 6.20 ERA. Deride the quality start statistic all you want, because the minimum requirements (at least six innings, no more than three earned runs) seem unspectacular. But no Yankee besides Fried has made one so far.

Schmidt may not be a savior, exactly. But in that context, he’s at least a sight for sore arms.

“It’s important,” said manager Aaron Boone. “I mean, we’re counting on Clarke. We expect a lot from Clarke now.”

Schmidt missed three and a half months last season with a right lat strain, but otherwise rewarded the Yankees’ faith. His 2.85 ERA was the 10th best in baseball among pitchers with at least 85 innings, and Boone made him the Game 3 starter in the postseason.

It worked well enough until the World Series, when Schmidt took the mound in the Bronx after the Yankees dropped two in Los Angeles. He walked the leadoff hitter, a diminished Ohtani, on four pitches. Two batters later, with Freddie Freeman down in the count, catcher Austin Wells set a target for a cutter on the outside corner.

When Schmidt pulled the pitch up and in, Freeman pounced, punishing a 100.3-mph statement into the right-field seats.

Schmidt survived the second inning, then walked three and allowed another run in the third, when Boone pulled him. The Yankees lost that night and Dodgers took the title in five games, cancelling a return flight to L.A. that would have been piloted by Schmidt’s father, Dwight, a Delta Air Lines captain who had flown the Yankees’ charter that month.

“We’ll make it happen, though,” Schmidt said. “It’ll all come full circle, I’m sure.”

For Schmidt, 29, confidence comes partly from his conviction to learn from defeat.

“I see it across the board with the elite pitchers in this game: They take failure in stride and they’re able to take their blows on the chin and they’re like, ‘All right, how can I make adjustments, where did I go wrong, whether it was emotionally or physically?’” he said.

“And for me, I have kind of an innate ability to take failure in stride. I take adversity very well and I understand that’s inevitable in this game, especially as a starting pitcher.”

Schmidt has not pored over the details of his World Series loss — “I haven’t really, like, super-dived into that,” he said — but what lingers is the sense that he tried too hard. He forced his emotions when they should have come naturally.

“That’s a unique experience when you’re in the World Series, but it ties into the regular season,” Schmidt explained. “You played in the biggest game of your life and you look back after — and it’s not like these games don’t matter, but this almost feels like how I was playing when I was younger. You feel loose; even in spring training, everything seems to feel a little bit different.

“And a lot of the young guys, we talk about that now, it’s like you feel a lot more comfortable in these games and it feels like you don’t have to bring extra energy, you’re not showing up with that extra bit of adrenaline. It’s just like: go out there and be yourself.

“And to fail — in my eyes, I didn’t do what I wanted to do, so for me to not do my job that night and know that if that’s the worst it gets, then I still woke up the next day and I’m still here. You still have another opportunity.”

Schmidt has earned those chances. A first-round pick in 2017, he is a Yankees success story, probably the best pitcher they have drafted since another University of South Carolina starter, Jordan Montgomery, in 2014.

The goal now, Schmidt said, is to blend his dependability from 2023, when he made 32 starts, with his results from last season.

“I know I’m able to put that together,” he said. “It’s just a matter of time.”

For the Yankees, that time has to be now. Tuesday was free of stress, with Fried on the mound and the Royals (team average: .208) at the plate. It won’t be that way every night, and another reliable starter is the Yankees’ biggest need. For now, Schmidt is their best chance of filling it.

“(From) everything that I saw in spring, he’s got really great stuff,” Fried said. “I feel like he’s got a lot of the same sort of pitch mix as I do, so he’s able to move the ball around, have a lot of different speeds and different ways that the ball’s moving and keep hitters off balance. I know he’s really excited to get back out there and help us out. We’ll definitely take a talent like Clarke.”