In a lot of ways, this was vintage Gerrit Cole, who allowed two home runs but struck out a season-best 11 and showed off maybe his best stuff since returning from surgery.

In a lot of ways, this was vintage José Caballero, whose pitch-clock violation and argument over an apparent rule change the Yankees were not alerted to led to both team-wide fury and a strikeout.

And in a lot of ways, this was the recent Yankees lineup, which scored with one swing and not again.

Ben Rice’s three-run blast in the seventh inning was not enough, as the Yankees continued to fail at the plate and particularly in the clutch on the way to a 5-3 loss to the Pirates in 10 innings, disappointing the announced crowd of 43,290 in The Bronx who showed for the matinee end of a doubleheader.

A Wednesday that started with excitement for the Yankees, who for the first time were going to see Cole and Max Fried in the same rotation and on the same day, instead ended with a familiar exasperation over a lack of offense, which finished 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position.

“We had a couple of chances where I think we had a couple of runners on base early and just couldn’t do anything with it,” manager Aaron Boone said after the Yankees (56-45) fumbled momentum from their eight-run outburst Monday. “Just not a good enough day for us offensively.”

In 10 innings, the Yankees finished with six hits (four singles) and did not score more than five runs for a 27th game in their past 29.

The Pirates broke through in the 10th against Fernando Cruz, who could not get Marcell Ozuna to chase a splitter and watched a 1-2 count become a walk. Run-scoring hits followed from Jared Triolo — a well-struck single to left that was just out of Cody Bellinger’s reach — and Jake Mangum — who dropped a single in front of Trent Grisham — to put the Yankees in a second hole, this one from which they would not escape.

The Yankees’ bottom of the 10th went the same way as their first nine innings: With a runner on second, Bellinger (third strikeout of the game), Jasson Domínguez (pop out) and Jazz Chisholm Jr. (pop-out) could not come through, which has become routine for an attack that lacks Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton.

“We just got to be more consistent offensively,” Boone said of a group that would have been held scoreless if not for Rice’s 30th homer of the season into the second deck in right to tie the game in the seventh.

For the loss, the Yankees could have blamed Cole (seven innings, three runs), who sat down the first 14 batters he faced and was overwhelming outside two pitches: a changeup that Jacob Gonzalez pulled to the short porch for a two-run homer in the fifth and a down-the-middle fastball that Nick Gonzales sent into the Yankees’ bullpen in the seventh.

Or maybe they could have blamed Cruz, who allowed four of five Pirates to reach in the deciding 10th, in which he walked two and looked like he was pitching on a third day of four, which he was.

Or maybe they could have blamed Major League Baseball, which they say did not alert them that it was cracking down on Caballero’s pitch-clock manipulation, a lack of communication Boone called “embarrassing.” Caballero was issued an automatic strike in his sixth-inning at-bat for a pre-pitch routine that he has used since the onset of the pitch clock. He struck out on the next pitch.

But the bigger factors in the loss were the 12 strikeouts and the rallies that weren’t: a first-and-second threat in the fourth in which Domínguez, Chisholm and Caballero struck out; a first-and-second threat in the fifth in which Rice struck out and 27th man Spencer Jones flied out.

“It’s tough to lose any game,” Rice said, “but of course, I thought we were going to have a chance to take the lead at some point after tying it up.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t.”