The Yankees stumbled into Tuesday’s trade deadline day with a whimper, mixed with a dash of absurdity.

Hours after Domingo German was scratched from Monday’s start because of what manager Aaron Boone said was armpit discomfort, the right-hander suddenly appeared in the bullpen in the middle of the game and came on to pitch five scoreless innings.

The only problem for the Yankees was that Jhony Brito, who was called up from Triple-A to make a spot start in place of German, had already gotten shelled by the time German was deemed available to pitch.

The Rays crushed four home runs in four innings off Brito while Tyler Glasnow cruised against the Yankees’ punchless offense, handing them a 5-1 loss in The Bronx.

On a night when the Yankee Stadium crowd lacked much juice, the home team didn’t offer many reasons to change that or to convince its front office that it should buy ahead of Tuesday’s 6 p.m. trade deadline.

Instead, the last-place Yankees (55-51) could be at least in partial sell mode, The Post’s Joel Sherman reported on Monday, indicating they would be open to discussing trades involving their pending free agents.