A couple hours before Wednesday’s series finale against the Giants, Mariners manager Scott Servais hiked up the steps at Oracle Park to take in the view of the San Francisco Bay and the strange smoky orange atmosphere hanging over the city due to the California wildfires.

For Servais, the scene was unique and a little disturbing, given the hue of the sky matched the Giants team colors.

“I think maybe it was a bad omen,” Servais said after his Mariners weathered a 10-1 loss. “Everything was orange. And when you’re playing the Giants and the sky is orange, it’s not a great feeling. And it certainly didn’t work out well tonight.”

• Box score

The goal all along for the Mariners this season has been to learn more about their young players. Along the way, they’re discovering a few more things: Like the Giants are rapidly improving, as well.

Seattle arrived in San Francisco riding a six-game winning streak that sparked conversation about postseason possibilities, but the Giants completed a two-game sweep with the lopsided victory on Wednesday and have now won 15 of their past 20 games to turn around their own slow start.

The Mariners had won 12 of 16 coming into the series in large part due to strong starting pitching, but the Nos. 5 and 6 starters in their young six-man rotation didn’t fare well against the Giants.

After rookie Ljay Newsome got just four outs in Tuesday’s 6-5 loss before being knocked out by a line drive off his hand, lefty Nick Margevicius lasted 4 2/3 frames while allowing seven runs on six hits and three walks.

The 24-year-old Margevicius had performed well in four previous starts since replacing Kendall Graveman in the rotation, but he saw his ERA jump from 3.86 to 5.34 while his record dropped to 1-3.

Margevicius, making his first start since Aug. 28 due to the postponed series with Oakland, came out impressively, striking out five while zipping through the first two innings. But the big lefty gave up a three-run homer to Mike Yastrzemski in the third and saw his pitch count climb to 101 by the time he was pulled with the bases loaded and trailing, 4-1, with two outs in the fifth.

The outing turned largely on the 1-2 fastball to Yastrzemski that Margevicius left in the middle of the plate, which came immediately after newly acquired catcher Luis Torrens went out to discuss their strategy.

“There was some discussion on what pitch to go with,” Servais said. “Marg wanted to get a fastball up, which is a really good pitch against Yastrzemski. But he didn’t get it there. He left it down, and he hit a three-run homer. Marg is learning a ton. We like him. We like his stuff a lot. He just couldn’t finish off a few innings here tonight.”

The back-to-back short starts exposed a bullpen that has endured considerable turnover and owns the highest ERA in the American League, with recently claimed right-hander Walker Lockett giving up six hits and three runs in 1 1/3 innings in his second appearance for Seattle and allowing all three inherited runners from Margevicius to score as well.

Those last three runs certainly didn’t help Margevicius’ final line, but he was more frustrated with the pitch to Yastrzemski that he’d like to have back.

“I was feeling good with all my pitches,” he said. “Obviously, I’m upset with the pitch to Yastrzemski, but I felt my stuff was pretty good tonight.”

The youngster has shown good maturity on the mound and carries that same approach when looking at the big picture of throwing well without much to show for it.

“It’s part of pitching and it’s frustrating when you feel you have good stuff,” he said. “But there’ll be days you don’t have good stuff and it looks like you threw a gem. It’s just how baseball balances out over the course of a season. Obviously, it’s frustrating for me, but I’ll go back and look at the process and see what I was really doing and how I was executing my pitches.”

The Mariners head now to Phoenix for a three-game series against a D-backs squad that sits in last place in the National League West at 15-29 and has lost 18 of its past 20.

Seattle has dropped back to 19-24 and sits 2 1/2 games back of the Astros for the second postseason position in the AL West and three back of the Yankees for the No. 8 AL Wild Card spot with 17 games remaining.