The Twins’ playoff chances are on life support and attempts to resuscitate them were unsuccessful on Thursday.

To realistically keep their playoff chances alive this week, the Twins were going to need to sweep the Miami Marlins, the National League’s worst team — or at least win two out of three — and get some outside help, as well.

They got no outside help — the Tigers and Royals, whom they are chasing in the wild card race, both completed sweeps — and though they did battle back twice late in Thursday’s game, they ended up falling 8-6 to the Marlins in a 13-inning crushing defeat, missing chances all night to grab a win.

Otto Lopez’s double off Scott Blewett put Miami up for good and Griffin Conine then added a two-run single off Justin Topa, helping the Marlins (59-100) pull away after a dramatic few innings before that in which the Twins could not capitalize on their many chances.

“It sucks,” catcher Ryan Jeffers said. “We had every opportunity put in front of us to win that baseball game. Our season is on the line and we weren’t able to execute to get that run across. It’s a really, really shitty feeling.”

The Twins (82-77) finished the day 2 for 19 with runners in scoring position, leaving 15 runners on base, many in the later innings of the contest as their bullpen did what it could to keep them alive on the other side.

“To have that many baserunners, we  did something right, but clearly there’s something missing when we get guys on base,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “We’re really struggling. … We had baserunners galore. They were everywhere, all night. But to win, you have to bring them in.”

In the ninth, the Twins stranded Byron Buxton, whose speed after an 11-pitch at-bat, helped place him on second with just one out. An inning later, the teams traded sacrifice flies, scoring their automatic runners. The Twins could have had more, but center fielder Derek Hill made a great falling catch on the warning track to prevent Willi Castro’s sacrifice fly from becoming a game-winning hit.

“He made the catch and it was like, ‘What else do we need to do?’” Buxton said. “That kind of was a sucker punch because we thought we had it.”

Neither team scored in the 11th with the Marlins using a five-man infield to cut down a Twins runner trying to score at home. In the next inning, Jeffers, who made a critical error in the fifth inning missing a catch at the plate and allowing a runner to score, bunted into a double play with Carlos Santana getting caught off second, helping squash the Twins’ opportunity to walk it off.

“Personally I feel like I let a lot of guys down,” Jeffers said. “Personally just didn’t do what I needed to do to help the team win a baseball game.”

The chaotic late innings were set up by an eighth-inning rally that kept the Twins alive, started by Royce Lewis, who drew a one-out walk. Santana followed, just missing a two-run, game-tying home run, instead settling for a long single off the limestone overhang in right field.

Rookie Brooks Lee then came through with the biggest of his career, hitting a double off the wall in right field to bring them both home and tie up the game.

But though the Twins forced their way back into Thursday night’s game, overcoming a four-run deficit, they never could get themselves a lead, with the offense that has led to this dramatic slide out of the playoff picture unable to convert.

So, the Twins will enter the final weekend of the season with a chance at postseason play — albeit a tiny, highly unlikely one.

Both the Tigers and Royals have a magic number of one, meaning the Twins would need to win out and have one of those two teams lose their remaining three games.

The Twins will host the playoff-bound Baltimore Orioles, the Tigers get the historically-bad White Sox and the Royals will play the Braves, who themselves are fighting for a playoff spot.

Minnesota, which trails both teams by three games with three games to go, holds the tiebreaker over both so, which is why it has yet to be mathematically eliminated.

“It’s one of those that hurts,” Buxton said. “We know what’s at stake and we’ve got to keep pushing.”

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