Nestor Cortes, an essential part of the Yankees’ starting rotation, defended his team on social media last week, saying this among other things: “Everybody wants to be us.”

Not lately, they don’t. Because lately the Yankees have looked nothing at all like the team that started out 50-22 and have instead looked way too much like the team that finished fourth in the AL East a year ago.

While the Mets -- who beat the Yankees for a third straight time on Tuesday night -- have had the best record in the sport since the middle of June, only the White Sox have had a worse record than the Yankees. This has now gone on for more than a month now, which happens to equate to a third of the season the Yanks have played so far. Since they beat the Red Sox on June 14 at Fenway Park, they have played 31 games and won only 10 of them.

The broader context, of course, is that despite all of this -- and despite the fact that it has mostly looked, game in and game out, like Aaron Judge and Juan Soto against the world -- the Yankees are still only three games behind the Orioles in the loss column for first place in the AL East. But that also happens to be the same number of games in the loss column that they are ahead of the third-place Red Sox, even though the Red Sox had lost four in a row, a couple of those being gutting losses, before beating the Rockies in Denver on Tuesday night.

So despite the fact that manager Aaron Boone only further enflamed his frustrated fan base -- frustrated to put it mildly these days -- by once again saying, “It’s right there in front of us,” it actually still is.

Just not playing the way they’ve been playing. Early in June, it seemed that general manager Brian Cashman, the architect of this team, might be looking to make minor additions to a club that was rolling through the division and the league. Maybe another corner infielder, once Anthony Rizzo was back on the injured list. Maybe some new arms for the bullpen, despite the fact that almost everybody in baseball is looking for the same thing.

Now, the Yankees are suddenly looking more vulnerable than ever without anybody below Judge in Boone’s batting order doing much of anything. It is a big reason why Giancarlo Stanton suddenly feels like he could be some kind of savior once he is back from another visit to the IL, in what feels to Yankees fans like years of visits since he became a Yankee.

Before Stanton injured his left hamstring running the bases, he had played 69 games for the Yankees this season, with 18 home runs and 45 RBIs. More importantly, he was providing protection behind Judge and Soto, and posing danger to opposing pitchers. In so many ways, and as fragile as the big man has been since joining the Yanks from Miami, he seems even more important to the team now than when he arrived.

On Tuesday night against the Mets, Jahmai Jones was Boone’s leadoff hitter. J.D. Davis, whom the Yankees recently got in a trade with the A’s, batted cleanup. Davis’ batting average is .216. No. 12 prospect Ben Rice, who has a three-homer game in the books since the Yankees called him up, pinch-hit later for Davis. Rice is at .196 right now. Anthony Volpe, whose batting average has dropped 40 points over the past couple of months, is at .254, Gleyber Torres is at .230 going into Wednesday’s Subway Series game, Alex Verdugo is at .231. Austin Wells, the regular catcher with Jose Trevino on the IL, carries a .222 average. Third baseman DJ LeMahieu is at .183.

You can see why the Mets walked Aaron Judge four times on Tuesday night, before Judge took a called third strike from Jake Diekman in the bottom of the ninth with Soto -- he’d also walked to start the Yankees' ninth -- on first and representing the potential tying run.

It is why you'd think the Yankees might be as desperate for internal help as external reinforcements with the July 30 Trade Deadline fast approaching, for them and everybody else. They need Stanton and Rizzo to come back and exciting top prospect Jasson Domínguez -- who had Tommy John surgery a year ago, then suffered a left oblique strain with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre -- to finally join them this season. They need Volpe, whom they simply could not leave at leadoff, to pick it up, and they need Torres to once again look like the star they once thought he would be and not somebody who seems to be playing his way out of town in a contract year.

“Look, we’ll get that middle of the order more settled in the coming days, too, and that changes the equation a little bit,” Boone said after Tuesday’s 3-2 loss to the Mets.

Yeah. They need to change the equation, and fast. They can still pass the Orioles, absolutely. Or get passed by the Red Sox before long. The wisdom on all this comes from a great old Yankee named Yogi Berra: Sure gets later early around here.