Blue Jays outscored 16-3 in humiliating doubleheader sweep by the Yankees

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There is no shortage of descriptors to frame the Blue Jays stunning inability to score runs through 28 games of a thus far disappointing season.

In fact, the evidence continues to pile high following a truly demoralizing six-game road trip, one in which the Jays went 1-5 after three-game stops to face the Houston Astros and the New York Yankees.

The latest flailing failings came on Sunday in New York when the Jays were meekly swept by the Bronx Bombers in both ends of a doubleheader — 11-2 and 5-1.

That capped a trip in which manager John Schneider’s struggling group combined for just nine runs in six games — and that includes one contest in which they scored four, the lone win which came at Yankee Stadium on Friday.

With the pair of losses on Sunday — by an aggregate score of 16-3 for those scoring at home — the Jays’ record slipped to 13-15, the first time they have been two games below .500 this season. They now skulk home with just one win in their past eight games.

In the 54 innings of road baseball over the past week, the Jays mustered more than a one-run inning just once — that three-run ninth on Friday that allowed them their only win on this journey, one that now feels like an outlier. Without a clutch two-run double from catcher Alejandro Kirk in the ninth, the Jays would have suffered the indignity of an 0-6 road trip.

In the five losses, the first of Sunday’s pair in New York represented their biggest offensive output when they managed to get just two runs across.

As has been the ongoing saga of the Jays this season, starting pitchers can’t afford even one suspect inning or risk. So fast forward to the sixth inning of Sunday’s second game, which starter Chris Bassitt entered having retired the previous 10 Yankees batters he had faced.

Looking good, right? Not when the man at the plate was the Yankees Aaron Judge, who promptly blasted a Bassitt miscue over the right-field wall for his eighth homer of the season. Two more runs in the inning, and the Yankees had a three-run lead and were on their way.

The lone Blue Jays run in Game 2 came on Anthony Santander’s solo homer in the third, but even that felt like a consolation prize given it was one of just three hits in the game.

The Jays slipped into fourth place in the American League East, four games behind the division-leading Yankees and the farthest they have been out of first this season.

After an off-day on Monday, the task doesn’t get any easier with a six-game home stand starting on Tuesday at the Rogers Centre with three against the Boston Red Sox.