What has been apparent for over a month is now official: The Yankees will be sitting out the playoffs.

For the first time since 2016, the postseason will happen without the Yankees, who were finally eliminated from AL wild-card contention Sunday when they fell to the Diamondbacks, 7-1, in The Bronx.

A season that began with World Series aspirations will now end next Sunday and go no further.

Instead of chasing the franchise’s 28th title, the Yankees (78-77) will enter a critical offseason in which Hal Steinbenner has promised they will take a hard look at all aspects of their operation.

With the Yankees’ long playoff odds now shot, the only hint of intrigue over the final week of the season will be whether they can avoid their first losing record since 1992.

It was a fittingly miserable Sunday afternoon in The Bronx, with rain and wind picking up throughout the game in front of a sparse crowd.

Carlos Rodon, in his 13th start of the season, pitched into the seventh inning for his second straight outing but gave up five runs (three earned) across 6 ¹/₃ innings against the Diamondbacks (82-73).

And in an all-too-familiar trend, the Yankees offense was hardly heard from, mustering just six hits — a handful of them wind-aided.

They narrowly avoided being shut out by scratching across a run in the ninth inning.

Though the Yankees have played better baseball in September to keep themselves mathematically alive for a playoff spot until Sunday, their road to elimination began well before that.

They were a season-high 11 games above .500 at 36-25 on June 4, the day after Aaron Judge tore a ligament in his big right toe by running into the right-field wall at Dodger Stadium.

Since then, they have gone 42-52, with a nine-game losing streak in August serving as the beginning of the end of their season.

While they have dealt with injuries and underperformance in their rotation, the Yankees were largely done in by a brutal offense.

Their struggles, with and without Judge in the lineup, led to the dismissal of hitting coach Dillon Lawson at the All-Star break, but the coaching change was not enough to spark a second-half revival.

By the end of August, the Yankees had signaled a change in focus from chasing the playoffs to prioritizing a youth movement, trying to get a head start on evaluating players who could potentially help them in 2024.

But they will likely need more than just in-house personnel to help them get back to the playoffs next year.