Securing a big back-end-of-the-bullpen arm and a potent righthanded bat — preferably one belonging to a third baseman — have been the Yankees’ priorities for weeks as the July 31 trade deadline approaches.

Add starting pitcher to that list.

That became a reality on Saturday when manager Aaron Boone  disclosed that righthander Clarke Schmidt is all but certain to undergo Tommy John surgery, having suffered a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow.

“I think it’s pretty much inevitable,” Boone said.

It is another jolt to a suddenly shaky rotation. Dating to spring training, rotation depth  already was a concern even before Gerrit Cole was lost for the year to Tommy John surgery and Luis Gil started the year on the injured list with a right lat strain.

Gil recently began throwing simulated games and should start a rehab assignment within the next week to 10 days, meaning his return is, best case, still a month or so away.

Marcus Stroman has made two starts since returning from the injured list, his most recent an OK performance Friday against the Mets as he allowed three runs and seven hits in five innings.

Soft-throwing lefty Ryan Yarbrough — who started the season as the long man but pitched well after becoming the fifth starter in early May after Stroman was sidelined with knee inflammation — is on the IL with a right oblique strain and has not yet started to throw during his rehab process.

The options at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre are not especially appealing. Among them are  Allan Winans (two outings, including one start) and Carlos Carrasco (eight outings, including six starts), neither of whom has impressed when given the chance to start this season.

The Yankees recently promoted one of their top pitching prospects, righthander Cam Schlittler, to Triple-A. He's been hyped by plenty inside the organization, but those plaudits are harder to find outside it.

“Might be something there,” one  National League scout assigned to the Yankees' system said. “But for me, right now, not even close [to major league-ready] . . . not a lot of options down there. Good ones, anyway.”

Schmidt left his most recent start Thursday night in Toronto after three innings with what the team called right forearm tightness. But speaking after that game, an 8-5 loss that gave the Blue Jays a four-game sweep, Schmidt twice mentioned his elbow in answering questions about what he was feeling and where.

“It’s kind of hard to pinpoint, but just the general forearm/elbow area,” Schmidt, 4-4 with a 3.32 ERA in 14 starts this season, said on Thursday. “So we’ll see.”

What doctors saw on the MRI that Schmidt underwent on Friday was the tear.

“When I talked to him a couple of hours ago, he was in pretty good spirits,” Boone said. “Like ‘it is what is.’ In a lot of ways, obviously [he’s] devastated and bummed out, but Clarke’s way is you’ve got to flip the script, and he’s getting his mind into 'let’s get it fixed and get on with it and start to get after the rehab portion of it.' ”

This is the second Tommy John surgery for Schmidt. He also had the procedure done in April 2017, a little more than a month before the Yankees selected him 16th overall in that year’s draft out of the University of South Carolina.

This marks the second straight year Schmidt has suffered a significant injury. In 2024, off to a terrific start in his first full season as a big-league starter — 5-3 with a 2.52 ERA through 11 starts — he missed a little more than three months with a right lat strain. He finished the year 5-5 with a 2.85 ERA in 16 starts.

“He’s become a really, really good starting pitcher in this league,” Boone said. “It’s a tough blow but one we’ve got to . . . again, every team has their share of these things happen and we’ve got to be able to absorb it and hopefully get some guys back in the mix soon and create another opportunity for somebody else to hopefully step in and pick up the slack.”