After he hit an eighth-inning pop up with a pair of runners on, Ryan Jeffers took his bat and threw it hard, in disgust, at the ground. Starting pitcher Bailey Ober showed his own signs of frustration, shaking his head after allowing four runs in the second inning.

More than a month of subpar play has resulted in this: The Twins are now on the outside of the playoff picture, trying to force their way back in.

Things got even bleaker for the Twins on Tuesday when, with one of their best pitchers on the mound and facing off against the team with the National League’s worst record, they staggered to their fifth loss in six games, a 4-1 defeat at Target Field at the hands of the Miami Marlins (58-99).

“We’re all trying our best, and everybody wants to be in the playoffs. It’s just not clicking right now,” shortstop Carlos Correa said. “It’s five games. We’ve got to give it everything we’ve got. We’ve got to figure it out.”

But even if they do, their margin for error got even slimmer on Tuesday night.

Before the Twins (81-76) took the field, Cy Young Award front-runner Tarik Skubal pitched the Detroit Tigers to a victory over the Tampa Bay Rays. And while the Twins were playing, Kansas City star Bobby Witt Jr. brought home the only run in a 1-0 extra-inning win over the Washington Nationals.

Both American League Central Division foes now sit two games ahead of the Twins, whose odds to make the playoffs are down to 27.5 percent, per FanGraphs.

The dramatic turn in the Twins’ fortunes has come largely as a result of their offense, which finished the day 1 for 9 with runners in scoring position, leaving 10 on base.

“It’s really frustrating,” Jeffers said. “We’re just not able to scratch across runs when we need to. We’re not able to get the big hit. We’re not able to hit the ball out of the park. … The times when we need a big hit, it’s just not happening.”

It hasn’t been for some time now, and the Twins are quickly running out of time in their search for answers. There needs to be more urgency, Correa said, in terms of players show up early, getting their work in and trying to figure out what will help.

And is there?

“Some guys, yeah,” Correa said. “Some of us hit extra today and tried to figure something out. We didn’t get the win, but we’ve got to do more of that and eventually find something right away so we can go out there and put up more runs.”

The offense has not scored more than four runs in a game since Sept. 15, so when Ober gave up four runs in the second inning alone, the Twins were in for an uphill battle.

Marlins designated hitter Jonah Bride hammered a high fastball off Ober to the second deck in left field to give Miami its first run. One hit batsman, two singles and a double later, and the Twins were in for a tough day.

“Just with where we’re at in the season, every run counts and matters. I’m not thinking about our productivity on the other side,” Ober said. “I’m trying to limit everything they have and not allow them to get a big inning like that. I was a little frustrated that it happened.”

And if things don’t turn around — and fast — in the remaining five days of the regular season, the frustration felt around the team is going to linger long past Tuesday, as the Twins watch the playoffs from home.

“In my head, we always go one game at a time, but we’ve got to win a bunch of games right now,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “This is well past just us needing to play good baseball. We need to win, and we know that.”