Leave it to Taijuan Walker to get the bogeymen out again.

OK, so it wasn’t just Walker. Hardly. He set the discordant tone Tuesday night with a 33-pitch grind-a-thon in the first inning in his first start in 53 days. But the Phillies returned from 10 games on the West Coast looking listless from the top of their $260 million roster to the end.

That’s what it usually looks like when you score four hits and get blown out by a last-place team that traded away a third of its roster at the trade deadline. But as bad as the Phillies have been playing lately, they never looked as weak as they did in their 5-0 loss to the unknown Miami Marlins.

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Then came the boos from the sold-out crowd at Citizens Bank Park for the 23rd year in a row.

That means baseball’s former best team has now lost four games in a row — 11 in 15 games. The Phillies are 7-16 since the All-Star break, worse than only the historically bad Chicago White Sox. They are 69-50, and have fewer than 20 games over .500 for the first time since reaching that high mark on May 28.

The Phillies no longer even have the best record in the National League. And although they are still 6.5 games ahead of the Braves in the division, the Phillies are battling with the Dodgers and Brewers for a top-two seed in the NL and the first-round bye that comes with it.

While the Phillies’ victories have been exhilarating over the first three months of the season, losses have become epidemic. They have shown little energy, aside from a busy third-inning double by Johan Rojas, who promptly stopped at second base.

The Phillies delayed Walker’s return to the rotation due to a blister on his right index finger as they put him in a program designed to restore his flagging velocity. Now, in mid-August, they’ve welcomed him back to eat innings as part of an eventual six-man rotation that can give their top four starting pitchers some breathing room.

Walker was a little rusty at the start, walking Jake Burger and Jesús Sánchez before allowing an RBI single to Jonah Bride and a two-out RBI single to Otto Lopez. Both hits came off sinkers, a pitch Walker often used to balance out his signature splitter.

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Burger gave the Marlins a 3-0 lead with a home run off a 92 mph fastball in the third inning. And after surviving a walk with two outs in the fourth inning, Walker finished with 76 pitches and just 44 strikes.

A three-run deficit hardly seemed insurmountable, especially against a pitcher (the Marlins’ right-hander Valente Bellozo) making only his fifth major league appearance. But Valente stood firm, and when he threw out Brandon Marsh in the bottom of the seventh inning, he clenched his fist and yelled triumphantly.

The Phillies, who have been chasing throws outside the strike zone a lot lately, were aggressive against Bellozo. But that only got them quick outs. They only got one runner to third base when Alec Bohm advanced on a ground-rule double by Nick Castellanos in the fourth inning. But neither of them made any progress.