ST. PETERSBURG -- For the Red Sox, an offensive free-fall that started roughly a month ago hit its nadir on Thursday night at Tropicana Field, perhaps taking some of the luster away from this weekend’s three-game series at Fenway Park against the Twins.

In a 2-0 defeat to the Rays that capped a disappointing 2-5 road trip, the Red Sox mustered just one hit -- a single from No. 9 hitter Nick Sogard with two outs in the top of the third.

That was the only time Boston reached base on a night a reeling team sent just 28 batters to the plate.

Zack Littell needed just 75 pitches to get through seven sparkling innings. Tampa Bay’s bullpen took it from there, retiring the final six in succession. That sent the 76-77 Sox home trailing the Twins and Tigers by four games for the third American League Wild Card spot with nine games left in the regular season.

“There’s a chance,” said Red Sox manager Alex Cora. “I mean, we sweep them, we’re one [behind them], but Detroit is tied [with Minnesota] and Seattle is ahead of us. It's an uphill battle. It's tough. Realistically, it's very tough, but we’ve still got three games against them.”

At the very least, the Red Sox would like to resuscitate their offense over the final stretch of the season.

On Wednesday, Ryan Pepiot overpowered the Red Sox with 12 strikeouts while allowing one run over six innings. Boston managed to win that game, 2-1.

Why couldn’t the Sox do more against Littell?

“Same thing that’s been happening for a month and a half,” Cora said. “Not executing. At one point, we were [one of] the best offenses in baseball against righties, and now we're not producing runs. He did a good job moving the ball, throwing four-seamers up, expanding with the split down -- kind of like the same thing we saw the first [two] days here.”

In the first 127 games of the season through Aug. 22, the Sox were fourth in MLB in runs per game, third in batting average, fifth in on-base percentage, second in slugging percentage, second in OPS, sixth in homers and first in BABIP.

In the 26 games since then, here are Boston’s rankings in those categories in the same order as listed above: (29th, 29th, 30th, 26th, 28th, tied for 15th and 26th).

Looking back, Cora thinks the downward spiral started a couple of weeks before the 26-game rut the team is currently in.

“Yeah. I think it started with Houston at home [on Aug. 9], and we haven't been able to produce consistently [since then],” said Cora. “There's big games here and there, but I think, overall, we haven't been able to produce.”

The team’s top two positional All-Stars -- Jarren Duran and Rafael Devers -- have slumped simultaneously.

Devers, playing through discomfort in his shoulders, has a slash line of .164/.253/.178 with a double, no homers and three RBIs in his last 83 plate appearances.

Duran, who has started 151 of his team’s first 153 games, is slashing .213/.234/.240 with two doubles, no homers and four RBIs in his last 77 plate appearances.

“I just feel like I'm [trying to do] too much right now,” Duran said. “I feel like I've been known to try and press and [try to] do too much. And I could totally feel myself doing that. But I’ve just gotta relax, play baseball and have some more fun.”

Duran likely isn’t the only one pressing.

“I know every guy in this room is trying their hardest, which could just be our thing right now is that we're trying too hard,” Duran said. “But at the end of the day, you know, it's baseball. [Littell] was just hitting his spots, locating. He just had us today. But it's baseball. We're gonna come back tomorrow and do our thing.”

The Red Sox hope a miracle is possible because that’s what they’d need to make the postseason at this point.

“We're still in it,” said Duran. “We're still hunting and we’ve got three important games coming up.”