Let’s not pretend here. The Marlins’ playoff hopes are basically dead at this point. Miami is 72-75, sitting 6.5 games back of the final Wild Card spot with only 15 games left to play, and now they get to host the best team in baseball. This has sweep written all over it.

The Dodgers are rolling, even without Ohtani

Los Angeles comes in winners of seven straight, fresh off sweeping both the Reds and the Nationals, and sitting at 89-57. And get this, they’re going to walk into loanDepot park without Shohei Ohtani, who just landed on the 15-day IL with lingering knee, biceps and neck issues, and it genuinely doesn’t matter. That’s how deep and talented this roster is. A team can lose the best player in the sport for an entire series and still be a massive favorite, and that tells you everything about the gap between these two clubs right now.

Game 1: Gusto vs Snell

Friday it’s Ryan Gusto against Blake Snell, and good luck with this one. Snell has been an absolute monster since coming off the IL, 3-0 with a 0.93 ERA over his last five starts, and he hasn’t allowed more than one run in any of them. Gusto, meanwhile, is sitting at 1-4 with a 4.23 ERA and just got rocked by the Cubs in his last outing, allowing five runs in 4.2 innings. There’s no sugarcoating this matchup, it’s brutal for Miami.

Game 2: Phillips vs Glasnow

Saturday is Tyler Phillips against Tyler Glasnow. Glasnow has been up and down since coming back from injury, a 4.00 ERA over three starts, so there’s a sliver of an opening here if the offense actually shows up. Phillips has a respectable 3.51 ERA overall this season, so this is probably the most competitive matchup of the series on paper, for whatever that’s worth against this lineup.

Game 3: Eury Perez vs Emmet Sheehan

Sunday it’s Eury against Emmet Sheehan, who’s only making his second start back since rejoining the Dodgers rotation. He was impressive in his first one against the Reds, one run over 5.2 innings with 10 strikeouts, so even the least established arm in this series is pitching well right now. That’s just where the Dodgers are at as an organization, their fifth starter is filthy too.

Making this matchup even worse, Eury has been an absolute mess in his last two starts. He got rocked for 6 runs in 4.2 innings against the Royals, then followed that up by getting torched for a season-high 7 runs on 10 hits in just 4 innings against the Mets. That’s 13 runs allowed in his last two outings combined. He’s more than capable of shutting a lineup down when he’s right, but he is nowhere near right at the moment, and running him out there against a hot Dodgers lineup in this state is a scary thought.

This team simply cannot play complementary baseball

Here’s what’s driving me insane about this Marlins team. They cannot, for the life of them, put together a complete game. If the pitching is good, the offense disappears. If the offense finally wakes up, like it did against the Mets, the pitching completely falls apart and gives it all back, they lost a game 15-14 in that series, which is just an insane final score to lose by. And on the rare occasion both sides show up at the same time, they find a way to beat themselves anyway with a baserunning blunder or a defensive error. This pitching staff was one of the best in baseball just a couple weeks ago, and now suddenly they’re getting shelled every time out. Nothing about this team is consistent, and complementary baseball, having your pitching and hitting show up on the same night, is apparently a foreign concept to this roster.

And I have to say it, the manager isn’t helping. Clayton has thrown out some of the worst lineups and batting orders I’ve seen all year, and the in-game decisions haven’t been much better. At a certain point you have to wonder how much of this falls on talent and how much of it falls on how this team is being managed on a nightly basis, because the head-scratchers have been constant all season long.

Prediction

I think the Dodgers sweep this series. Between the pitching matchups being this lopsided, the Marlins’ complete inability to play a full, clean game, and the way this offense has vanished for stretches at a time, I don’t see how Miami wins even one of these three. Hopefully I’m wrong, but I’m not feeling great about it.

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