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The Jays arrived in Central Florida on Monday with an outside chance of officially clinching a spot in the playoffs. That scenario became more realistic after they took the first two games, but then the bats went cold against a pitching staff they have yet to enjoy much success against.

With the magic number at three, the Jays were shut out for the first time since June 13 in a 4-0 loss to the Rays on Thursday afternoon. They managed just four hits, none of which came with runners in scoring position, before leaving town with a series split.

The Jays’ struggles vs. Tampa Bay aren’t new. They were swept in a three-game series at Steinbrenner Field earlier this year and they have won just one of their last seven road series against their divisional rival. The Rays are the only AL East team the Jays (3-7) have a losing record against this season even though Tampa Bay is 14 games back of first place.

The Jays have a 147-239 all-time record on the road vs. a Rays team that has consistently caused them problems. From a Jays’ perspective, the good news is that they won’t have to worry about the Rays in the playoffs. The bad news is that they still have three more games to play against them this season, which could complicate the Jays’ ability to clinch top spot in the AL.

The reason why the Jays have struggled so much against the Rays this season has been their lack of offence. In the previous May road series, the Jays scored two runs in three games. This week went almost as poorly with six runs in the first two — both of which were wins — followed by one run total in the two losses.

With the Jays’ bats in a slump, the Rays scored all the runs they would need during the second inning of Thursday’s finale. The Rays had the bases loaded with two outs when Chandler Simpson hit a two-run single to centre. Brandon Lowe soon followed with an RBI single of his own to make the score 3-0. The Rays then added one more in the sixth on a solo homer to left by Carson Williams.

Jays right-hander Chris Bassitt took the loss after allowing three runs over 4 1/3 innings, but he pitched a bit better than the line would suggest. In the problematic second inning, Bassitt gave up a bloop single to Hunter Feduccia, a seeing-eye single up the middle to Williams and an infield single to Bob Seymour. Chandler followed with a blooper that left his bat at just 71.4 mph while Lowe’s single bounced off the glove of Ernie Clement in what was a difficult — yet makable — play for the gold glover.

Even though Bassitt likely deserved a better fate, he wasn’t exactly sharp. The 36-year-old had a lot of difficulty finishing off hitters, which extended at-bats and led to an elevated pitch count. Bassitt was limited to three strikeouts while generating whiffs on just eight of the Rays’ 48 swings. He was charged with three runs on eight hits and a pair of walks.

That performance is not ideal, but the bigger concern is the offence. The Jays have been limited to three runs or fewer in six of their last 12 games. That’s an important threshold to break because the Jays are 76-19 when scoring at least four this season and 13-45 when they don’t.

The struggles have been team wide. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has two hits in his last 20 at-bats. Alejandro Kirk’s struggles date back even farther with a .227 average in September. Davis Schneider, Nathan Lukes, Andres Gimenez, Ty France and Isiah Kiner-Falefa are among the others with on-base plus slugging percentages well below .700 this month.

Dry spells like that are completely normal across a 162-game schedule and the Jays won’t be overly concerned because they still rank fourth in the majors with 4.99 runs per game. Even so, going cold at this time of the year is the last thing a team on the verge of making the playoffs wants to do. Equally troubling, they still aren’t guaranteed to have injured shortstop Bo Bichette back for the start of the post-season.

There haven’t been too many teams this season that exposed the Jays’ weaknesses as much as the Rays. Fellow contenders will soon take note by breaking down the video of this week’s series to see if they can do the same.