In need of a lift Saturday — from someone, anyone — the Yankees didn’t get one from Carlos Rodon.

The lefthander, mostly good and at times spectacular this season, was neither of those for the Yankees in their 12-6 loss to the Mets at Citi Field.

The Yankees have lost six straight games and 16 of their last 22 in falling three games behind the AL East-leading Blue Jays.

Rodon, 9-5 with a 2.95 ERA coming into the day, allowed a season-high seven runs (six earned, also a season high), five hits and three walks in five nondescript innings in which he struck out four.

“A lot of misses today,’’ he said, “and they punished them.”

The most significant blows were Brandon Nimmo’s first-inning grand slam, which came on a hanging 1-and-2 slider and gave the Mets a 4-0 lead, and the first of Pete Alonso’s two home runs, a two-run blast in the fifth inning that made it 7-2.

“The command just wasn’t very good today,” said Rodon, who has allowed 15 homers in his 19 starts. “The performance by me was very subpar, so it didn’t put us in a position to win.”

Said Aaron Boone: “Probably not as crisp of stuff as he’s had more often than not [this year]. Probably not a terrible pitch to Nimmo that he hits out, a pretty impressive swing he put on the ball. But just not sharp enough overall.”

One pitch after Nimmo swung and missed on a sharp-breaking low-and-away slider to bring the count to 1-and-2, Rodon threw a bad slider that Nimmo hit 387 feet to right-center to give the Mets a 4-0 lead.

The Yankees have had two six-game losing streaks in the last three weeks, the first one coming from June 13-18.

In the first one, the primary culprit was the offense, which totaled six runs and was shut out three straight times.

This skid has been different. The Yankees have scored 34 runs in the last six games, but the pitching staff, starters and relievers, have overwhelmingly been the issue.

The Yankees have been outscored 54-34 in the six games and have allowed 15 home runs that have produced 33 runs (the Yankees have hit 12, but they have resulted in only 17 runs).

“Right now we’ve gotta prevent runs better. That’s what’s kind of hurt us this week,” Boone said. “We’re swinging the bat, we’re putting some points on the board, but it’s been a tough week for us slowing down some offenses.”

After Rodon departed Saturday, Scott Effross, Javien Sandridge and JT Brubaker combined to allow five runs.

But it has not just been the pitching. Among the hallmarks during this recent skid has been sloppy defense, which again was the case Saturday as the Yankees committed two errors.

There was a bad throw by Jazz Chisholm Jr. on Tyrone Taylor’s one-out grounder in the second, with the two-base error preceding Starling Marte’s RBI single that made it 5-1. Centerfielder Trent Grisham booted Francisco Lindor’s RBI single in the seventh inning, giving Lindor an extra base, and two batters later, Alonso hit a three-run homer off Sandridge, a lefthander who was making his big-league debut.

Leftfielder Jasson Dominguez also misplayed Marte’s leadoff hit in the bottom of the first, though he was not charged with an error as Marte wound up with a double.

“That’s all part of the run prevention,” Boone said. “I feel like we have a good defensive club, we haven’t been our best here these last couple weeks. We’ve clearly made too many mistakes in the process while we’re struggling a little bit on the mound. So we’ve got to be better in all facets if we’re going to keep them off the board more often.”

The Yankees will try again on Sunday afternoon, this time with ace Max Fried on the mound.

“It’s never fun when you go through a stretch of six-game [losing streaks],” Rodon said. “This is why you play 162 games. The baseball season seems to always take a mental toll on guys, obviously including me and every one of us. But it’s a marathon, so you keep going.”