LOS ANGELES — Even after they took a one-run lead in the second inning and despite having their best starting pitcher, Logan Gilbert, on the mound, the possibility of victory still seemed unlikely.

The combination of how the Mariners had been playing on this horrendous road trip, which could be best described as rancid, and who they were playing — the Los Angeles Dodgers at near full strength — well, it wasn’t exactly a formula for success.

Similar to seven of the eight previous games on this three-city journey to what could be best described as rock bottom, the Mariners found the familiar path to defeat Wednesday at Dodger Stadium.

But the 8-4 pasting the Dodgers put on them, in a game that wasn’t that close, might have been the worst loss of the 1-8 road trip, particularly given the circumstances surrounding embattled manager Scott Servais.

It was the second time in the series that the Mariners lost on a day when the Astros also lost. They remain five games behind in the AL West standings. They also fell to 64-64 on the season. The last time they were at .500 was on April 24 when they were 12-12.

“Rough trip,” Servais said. “It has not been a good trip for us for a number of reasons. Certainly in a playoff race, you don’t want to go out and basically lay an egg on a road trip, and that’s what happened.”

They have an off-day on Thursday, but will there be action from the Mariners front office?

Servais wants a different sort of action from his players. He held a team meeting after the game to offer some instructions for Thursday.

“I talked to the team here and need to get away from it for a day,” Servais said. “They really do. Our guys are grinding. They’re trying to get this turned around. Sometimes you’ve just got to back off and back away when we come back home. We’ll come back Friday night at our place. It’ll be good to be back home, and hopefully we can get it going again.”

With a vocal portion of the fan base in search of someone to take the fall and lose their job for the team’s struggles, Servais has become the most demanded target. The comments from Jerry Dipoto, the Mariners president of baseball operations, in a story in The Athletic didn’t offer much of an endorsement or vote of confidence in Servais’ future.

The Mariners’ performance to close out the road trip and inability to avoid being swept by the Dodgers didn’t help Servais’ cause.

If Servais was concerned about his future, he didn’t show it. He tried to maintain optimism with the season crumbling around him.

“The talent in there is still the same talent that we’ve had all year, and we have put good stretches together,” he said. “I feel very confident we will again. It’s just tough to go through the road trip we just went through. We have to bounce back. That’s the bottom line.”

Gilbert came out with plenty of life on his pitches early in the game. His fastball reached triple-digits and breaking pitches had exceptional movement. But he struggled to harness the pitches, perhaps placing too much pressure on himself to be the stopper to the losing while navigating his way through the Dodgers’ loaded lineup. His teammates also failed to make plays behind him, and the offense provided its usual less-than-stellar run support when it mattered most.

“The Dodgers are rolling,” Servais said. “They’re playing really good baseball. They’ve got a good team. They’re hot. Logan came out tonight with, obviously, really good stuff. Early on, he was on a great roll, and then things got off the rails a little bit. I think he maybe tried to do a little too much as he got into the game.”

With the Mariners leading 1-0 thanks to Dom Canzone’s sac fly in the top of the second off Dodgers starter Jack Flaherty, Gilbert seemed to have worked a scoreless third inning when he got No. 9 hitter Kevin Kiermaier to hit a two-out ground ball to shortstop Leo Rivas.

But the young rookie mishandled it and never made a throw to first base. It allowed the top of the Dodgers’ lineup that features three former MVPs in the top three spots in the order — Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman — to come to the plate.

Gilbert walked Ohtani and then gave up a double to Betts, who ambushed a first-pitch fastball at the bottom of the zone for a double that scored both runners for a 2-1 lead.

“I can’t say enough the job that Leo Rivas has done for us, and he felt terrible after making the error there,” Servais said. “He has been on top of everything. His at-bats have been awesome. He’s played great defense. Errors happen and he made a mistake. We weren’t able to pick him up in that moment.”

The Dodgers tacked on another run in the fourth inning when Teoscar Hernandez led off with a single, stole second, advanced to third on the first of three wild pitches from Gilbert and scored on Will Smith’s sac fly.

“I just really didn’t execute when I wanted to,” Gilbert said. “I got in some deep counts.”

His outing fell apart in a fifth inning he couldn’t finish. With one out, Ohtani singled, stole second, advanced to third on a wild pitch and trotted home on Freeman’s two-out double to center. Hernandez scored Freeman with a single on a hard one-hopper off Rivas’ glove to make it 5-1.