Aaron Boone swore it wasn’t a hard decision.

It was the only one he could make.

Clarke Schmidt, a pitcher with an extensive injury history — including starting this season on the injured list with right shoulder fatigue — had thrown a career high-matching 103 pitches through seven innings on a sweltering Saturday afternoon. He also hadn't allowed a Baltimore hit.

No-hitter or not, pushing Schmidt — who has gotten on a major mound roll of late — to 110, 120 pitches, whatever, for a chance at history would have fallen in the category of organizational neglect, both for the team and for the pitcher.

Still, Boone, a third-generation big-leaguer, felt a pang of disappointment in doing what he had to do — remove Schmidt with a no-hitter in progress.

“I’m not going to put my guy in a tough spot,” Boone said after the Yankees beat the Orioles, 9-0. “Yeah, I’m sitting there wanting to watch a little history, too, but the player and the long game’s the most important thing.”

Schmidt, for years known as being among the most self-confident players in the clubhouse — Boone once laughed while discussing that confidence level, saying, “Clarke’s not human” — did not fight his manager on coming out.

Schmidt started the seventh inning at 82 pitches and knew, with 100 pitches fast approaching, that inning all but certainly would be his last. After Ryan O’Hearn battled him in an eight-pitch at-bat to start the inning, he knew it 100%.

“I had a lot of adrenaline in the last inning, and I felt like I was emptying the tank,” Schmidt said. “Definitely a little bit of fatigue from that.”

Schmidt said it wasn’t until taking the mound for the seventh that he was fully aware he had a no-hitter going.

“Obviously, I want to go as deep as I can,” he said. “But when you’re at the 103 mark and you have two more innings to go and you have 80 more games to go, you have to think bigger picture here. Obviously, it’s a tough conversation to have and you get frustrated, but it’s kind of a mutual feeling [between him and Boone] where it’s like, you have to think big picture here and is it worth throwing 130 pitches?”

No, naturally, because of that bigger picture.

Which is: Schmidt, when healthy, continues to show signs of rounding into not only a reliable big-league starter but a top-line one.

After Saturday’s game, Boone called Schmidt one of the “more underrated starting pitchers in the game.”

While it may be a tad too early to make that declaration, there is more evidence than not that Schmidt is getting there.

Before missing three months last season with a right lat strain, he was 5-3 with a 2.52 ERA through 11 starts. He finished the year 5-5 with a 2.85 ERA after returning in early September.

After some ups and downs in the early part of this season, Schmidt is 4-3 with a 2.84 ERA in 12 starts. He is unscored upon in three straight starts, a streak that he extended to 25 1/3 innings. He has not allowed a run in four of his last five starts, posting a 0.84 ERA and giving up 17 hits in 32 1/3 innings in that span.

In short, think of the questions Boone would have to answer if he allowed Schmidt to chase history . . . then saw the pitcher put on the injured list a week or two later with some kind of arm or shoulder issue.

“Of course, part of me did want to see that,” catcher J.C. Escarra said of Schmidt going for the no-hitter. “But, ultimately, just for his health, he had to come out.”

And so it was righty JT Brubaker coming on for the eighth to a smattering of boos.

That smattering became more pronounced when Brubaker — on a big-league mound for the first time since 2022 and making his Yankees debut after starting the season on the IL with broken ribs — allowed a leadoff single by, of all players, former Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez. (Sanchez appeared to some to have struck out on the pitch before getting the hit, but first-base umpire Jansen Visconti ruled he had checked his swing.)

“Everybody in the stadium knows the situation,” Brubaker said. “I’m not ignoring it, [but] any time I toe the rubber, I don’t want to give up a hit. It happened to be that there was the no-hitter going. Unfortunate 3-2 pitch [a 95-mph sinker] I kind of left middle of the plate and Gary hit it into center.”

Hypothetically, did Schmidt think he would have thrown the 13th no-hitter in franchise history if he had  been allowed to continue?

“Yeah, I would have thrown a no-hitter for sure,” he said with a laugh.

No one, of course, will ever know.

And, looking big picture, that’s OK.