BALTIMORE – Aaron Judge over the years has kept any individual goals he may have to himself.

Early in spring training this year, he made an exception, general as it might have been.

“I’d like to get off to a better start,” the reigning AL MVP said shortly after position players reported in February.

Judge, who was hitting .197 as late as May 2 last season before taking off, has done that.

And then some.

The outfielder put a cap on an April filled with video game-like numbers Wednesday night, hitting a two-run homer in his first at-bat en route to reaching base all four times he came to the plate.

But a Yankees offense that produced 19 hits, including six homers, the night before was mostly held in check by the pitching-poor Orioles in a 5-4 loss in front of 22,381 at Camden Yards.

“We couldn’t quite get there tonight,” Aaron Boone said of not being able to rally late.

Felix Bautista retired Oswald Peraza, Paul Goldschmidt and Trent Grisham in the ninth, leaving Judge on deck, much to the relief of the crowd and Orioles dugout.

Judge went 3-for-3 with a homer, a walk and two RBIs. He is hitting .427 with 10 homers and a 1.282 OPS.

“I try not to look at it,” Judge said of his numbers. “I’ve got a job to do every time I step up to the plate, no matter if I’m hitting .170 or hitting .300. You try to block out the past and focus on the situation at hand. I try not to look at that stuff until the season’s over.”

Entering Wednesday, Judge led the majors in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging, OPS, hits, times on base and total bases.

“You just have to go up there with confidence, no matter what,” Judge said. “I felt the same even when I was hitting .170 last year and you guys were asking me all the questions about, when are you going to turn it around? I can’t focus on results. You’ve got to focus on the process and trying to get a job done. If you do that for 500 at-bats, good things are going to happen.”

The Yankees (18-13) sandwiched two losses to the Orioles (12-18) around Tuesday night’s 15-3 victory.

Carlos Carrasco (2-2, 5.90), coming off five scoreless innings in his previous start against the Blue Jays, was not good, allowing four runs and eight hits over 3 1/3 innings. His counterpart, lefthander Cade Povich, allowed three runs, three hits and three walks over 4 2/3 innings.

After Judge’s two-run homer in the first, the Orioles tied it in the second on Ryan Mountcastle’s two-run blast. Baltimore added two more in the inning, getting a homer by Ramon Urias and an RBI single by Gunnar Henderson.

“My slider, it backed up a lot,” Carrasco said. “That’s what got hit. The (two-run) homer, was supposed to be down and away and it came back right in the middle.”

The Yankees cut their deficit to 4-3 in the top of the fifth when Goldschmidt hit his second homer of the season – the first coming March 29 – but the Orioles pushed their lead back to two in the bottom half against Hill, aided by a error by Anthony Volpe, terrific at short all season.

The Yankees pulled within 5-4 in the seventh on Judge’s two-out RBI single off righthander Yennier Cano.

The game included a rather silly bases-clearing incident in the fourth. After Heston Kjerstad singled against Carrasco, he took off for second as Urias struck out. Austin Wells’ high throw to second forced Pablo Reyes, getting the start at second for the injured Jazz Chisholm Jr., to jump and, per the laws of gravity, Reyes came down on the runner, whose head ended up between his legs.

“Really not much I can do,” Reyes said though his interpreter.

Kjerstad popped up and started jawing at Reyes, who walked toward him. The benches emptied, which involved nothing more than more jawing between a small handful of players.

“A couple words there that probably felt like disrespected me in the heat of the moment,” Reyes said. “Later on, it kind of toned down from there and moved on from it.”

Kjerstad was in the middle of a benches clearing incident last July between the clubs after he took a 97-mph sinker thrown by Clay Holmes in the right earflap of his batting helmet. That fracas led to the ejection of Orioles manager Brandon Hyde, who was intercepted by Wells trying to charge the Yankees dugout.