Marlins manager Fredi Gonzalez gave each of his seven relievers a disposable razor after Wednesday's rocky loss and ordered them to shave the mustaches they had started to grow.
''I'm a believer in karma,'' said Gonzalez, who thought the mustaches were bringing bad luck to the bullpen, which was going fine until the Los Angeles Dodgers hit town.
So much for that idea.
On Thursday, clean-shaven closer Kevin Gregg gave up two runs in the ninth and the visiting Dodgers completed a sweep of the Marlins with a 5-3 victory.
''We're done with the mustaches for now,'' Gregg said after dropping his second decision in three games. ``Obviously, they didn't work well for [the bullpen] because that was a brutal series on our part.''
The Dodgers cleaned house at Dolphin Stadium, winning the first and third games in the ninth and the middle contest in a blowout.
The Marlins did not score -- and managed just three hits -- in the eight innings thrown collectively by Dodgers relievers in the series.
It was a different story for the Marlins' bullpen, which entered the series with the second-best ERA in the majors, but came out of it with a pair of losses and a fatter ERA.
But the Marlins' batters were hardly exemplary.
When Hanley Ramirez gave the Marlins a 1-0 lead in the third with a two-out double, it marked the first -- and, as it would turn out, only -- time the Dodgers trailed at any point during the three games.
And that lead was wiped out immediately when the Dodgers picked up run in the fourth, and added two more in the fifth on Juan Pierre's double off rookie starter Burke Badenhop.
Badenhop, who was searching for his first major-league victory, delivered his best performance of the season, going six innings and holding the Dodgers to three runs.
''It feels like a world record as opposed to those three-inning deals,'' Badenhop said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, in reference to his run of abbreviated starts caused by a lack of success.
Then, noting that a large contingent of school-age children made up Thursday's announced crowd of 15,556, Badenhop said that ``with all the little kids in the crowd I felt like nobody was going to boo me too loudly.''
Badenhop didn't deserve any jeers based on his performance, one in which he held the Dodgers to five hits while striking out a career-high six, two fewer than he had managed in his 14 combined innings going into the game.
Although he did not collect his first victory, he wasn't saddled with another loss, either.
That is because Cody Ross finally broke out of a prolonged slump with his first home run, a two-run shot in the fifth inning that rattled the foul pole in left field and tied the score at 3. The blow was struck off Dodgers starter Hiroki Kuroda.
Ross hit just .146 during April.
The new month might have brought renewed promise for Ross, but it was a continuation of the losses that ended an otherwise successful month for the Marlins, who ended it atop the National League East standings.
One reason was that, after Ross circled the bases, the Marlins went flat at the plate.
Kuroda, along with relievers Scott Proctor, Joel Beimel and Takashi Saito, allowed only two of the Marlins' final 17 hitters to reach base, and one of those was courtesy of an error.
The score remained deadlocked until the ninth, when Gregg issued a leadoff walk to Rafael Furcal. After Pierre advanced Furcal with a sacrifice bunt, Matt Kemp ripped a single that scored Furcal with the go-ahead run.
The Dodgers got another run when Gregg and second baseman Robert Andino committed throwing errors on the same play.
When the inning ended, Gregg exchanged heated words with plate umpire Lance Barksdale, upset over some of Barksdale's pitch calls.
''There were some pitches I thought were right there,'' Gregg said.
``And when the game's on the line, you expect the strike zone to be called as is. You want strikes.''
Right now, the Marlins -- mired in their first three-game losing slump of the season -- are looking for a victory.
''We didn't play very well in this series. We had some ugly baseball games,'' Gregg said.
