The brutal stretch in which DJ LeMahieu finds himself is beginning to mirror last year’s late-season skid.

Except this time, there is no (apparent) injury on which to blame it.

That might make the veteran infielder’s current slump even more worrisome, and while LeMahieu certainly has plenty of company in his recent struggles, the Yankees desperately need him to start looking like his old self.

After going 0-for-4 with two more strikeouts in the first game of Sunday’s doubleheader against the Red Sox, LeMahieu entered Monday’s off day batting .167 (15-for-90) with a .491 OPS over his last 24 games.

It has become nearly as rough of a stretch as LeMahieu experienced at the end of last season, when he hit .162 (16-for-99) with a .344 OPS over his final 26 games while dealing with a sesamoid fracture in his right big toe and ligament damage in his second toe.

Still, the Yankees believe LeMahieu’s issues are more mechanical than anything physical, continuing to insist he is healthy — at least according to what the 34-year-old tells them.

“He doesn’t say [he’s compensating for anything], no,” hitting coach Dillon Lawson said Sunday in between games of a doubleheader sweep by the Red Sox. “I trust DJ.”

The issue, then? The Yankees point to his load, meaning the beginning of his swing in which he puts his weight on his back leg before getting into his stride.

“DJ started off the year extremely well,” Lawson said. “His load has changed a little bit. It’s caused him to come off the ball a little earlier. I would say that [Sunday] in the cage, it was especially good, so I’m hoping we’re taking steps forward in getting him back on the ball, staying on the ball, being able to drive back through the middle the way he’s always done.”

Across his first 37 games this season, LeMahieu was batting .276 with a .802 OPS, though he was still striking out at a much higher rate than he has for most of his career.

Now, the punchouts — his strikeout rate of 26.6 percent is his highest in 13 big-league seasons — have become even more magnified during his monthlong skid.

“His preload is probably not as good as I’m used to seeing,” manager Aaron Boone said. “Maybe it has a little bit something to do with how he’s loading a little bit, but once he can get there and figures that out, he’s got the hit tool. He’s gotta keep grinding away at it.”

LeMahieu, who still has three years and $45 million left on his contract after this season, has recorded an average exit velocity of 90.9 mph this season that still ranks in the 71st percentile of MLB.

But it has gone down each month — it was 93.3 mph in April, 89 mph in May and is 88.7 mph in June.

Lawson said that when he and assistant hitting coach Casey Dykes joined the staff prior to the 2022 season, LeMahieu showed them, “This is what my load looks like when it’s good, this is what it looks like when it’s bad.”

Lawson still has video on his phone from that spring training cage session and said he began to see the “bad” load from LeMahieu about three weeks ago.

“We recognized it and we’re working on it and we’ve been working on it,” Lawson said. “But sometimes these things do take time. Even if it’s something that he’s always done, it takes a little bit of time to get back to what he’s always done.

“It starts out as a little suggestion, ‘Let’s watch that front hip,’ or ‘Let’s keep that shoulder in.’ Then now, it’s like, there’s a large focus in the cage — not that we’re changing anything dramatically, but there’s just been added concentration.”