In a tough weekend for the team’s offense, the Yankees faced further challenges against the Red Sox due to poor baserunning, contributing to their 2-0 defeat on Sunday.

This time, the culprit was Ben Rice, who was caught breaking too early while trying to steal third in the top of the third inning.

He had singled to right with one out in the third and moved to second on Cody Bellinger’s two-out infield single.

During a play with Jazz Chisholm Jr. at bat, a baserunning misstep occurred when Rice attempted to advance to third base prematurely. As the pitcher, Brayan Bello, caught on, he quickly made a throw to shortstop Trevor Story, resulting in an out for Rice and ending the inning.

Although the Yankees have executed successful double steals earlier in the season, including one initiated by Rice in Kansas City on Wednesday, the attempted play on Sunday did not pan out as expected.

“I just kind of sensed that he was falling into a rhythm,’’ Rice said of Bello. “I thought I had a shot to get two guys in scoring position there. But, unfortunately, he got the timing perfect there.”

Aaron Boone didn’t mind the idea, but he didn’t like the execution.

“[Rice] is pretty adept at picking his spots there with two outs,” Boone said. “We’ve got the trail runner [Bellinger] coming, but you’ve got to be more certain than that. That’s a play you can’t get caught like that on a pickoff play there. That one obviously stung us a little bit when we had a little rally going.”

The miscue robbed the Yankees of one of their only chances, as they got just one more runner in scoring position the rest of the day.

Worse, it came a day after Jasson Domínguez made an even worse mistake on the bases in Saturday’s loss, when he lost track of the count and got caught between second and third during a Trent Grisham at-bat.

Domínguez thought Grisham had struck out and was tagged out at third.

Boone again pushed back on the notion that Anthony Volpe erred by getting thrown out attempting to steal third in the 10th inning of Friday’s loss, but in a series in which the Yankees got almost nothing going offensively, each was costly.