Is a miss as good as a mile? Discuss.

You know when doctors, and masseuses, and other various professionals who have the capacity to physically hurt you in the name of healing you (or so they say), do that thing where they press on you with increasing pressure and tell you to tell them when it hurts too much, and then they back off to the level immediately below that?

The San Francisco Giants 5-4 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers on Tuesday was kind of like that, except instead of backing off to the level immediately below too much pain, they just held constant right there.

The Giants lost. They looked competitive losing. They had opportunities to win. There’s an alternate world in which the dinks, donks, and doinks dink, donk, and doink differently and they don’t lose. They lost by the smallest margin in baseball history. You said, “too much!” and if they had backed off at all, they would have won. If they had pressed harder, you would have been miserable, and questioned why you made the choice to do this with your time.

Neither of those things happened. I just double-checked the box score and the Giants did, indeed, lose. But it wasn’t a blown save, or a walk-off, or a late-game fall-apart session. It wasn’t even an uncompetitive one-way street that made you question whether these silly boys even know how to play baseball.

It was just a loss. A good baseball game. A competitive baseball game. An enjoyable baseball game, I dare say. And a loss. As happens.

It just happened to be against the Dodgers, so you got a flat tire on the way home from said mildly-painful appointment. And then the world spontaneously combusted.

I have a theory. It goes like this: if you’re going to lose, lose by being bad at what you’re good at. If you’re pessimistic about the Giants, then them struggling with what they should do well is concerning. But if you’re optimistic about the Giants, it’s easy to hand-wave the strengths of the team struggling.

Did you know that Barry Bonds had 415 games in his MLB career in which he failed to reach base?

That optimism can only be present if the team, in turn, doesn’t struggle with the things they’re supposed to do poorly. And all of that was the case on Tuesday.

You believed the Giants had a chance because Logan Webb — reigning Cy Young runner-up, Academy Award nominee, and capeless hero — was on the mound. You were concerned because the Giants bullpen has been the baseball equivalent of a fever dream in this young season.

Webb gave up five runs and didn’t make it out of the fourth inning. The bullpen didn’t allow a single run.

It really is a silly sport. And I really did just spend hundreds of words trying to convince you that Webb giving up nine baserunners and five runs in just 3.2 innings is cause for excitement, not concern. Please send all complaints to Toby Flenderson. He’ll pass them along to the right people.

Webb was never comfortable, though he wasn’t particularly lucky, either. His day began in foreboding fashion, with an eight-pitch battle against Mookie Betts, who is on one of the greatest opening-season tears in MLB history (if you think I’m kidding, here’s what Betts has done in eight games this year: 15-30, five home runs, three doubles, one triple, eight walks). Webb finally got Betts to hit a pop-up, taming the Herculean hitter into a 68.1-mph drunken duck.

Naturally it fell for a hit.

That portended the inning. Webb struck out the side (including Shohei Ohtani), but allowed two singles, two stolen bases, and a run, while needing 29 pitches.

The third inning brought Betts back to the plate, where he smacked an absolute no-doubt home run. They say that batters don’t hit home runs, but rather that pitchers throw them. But in all-time greats like Betts, we find a middle ground, wherein the pitcher is not happy with the pitch they threw, but they also don’t really understand how the batter did that with it. That was what happened with Webb and Betts, who, by the way, now has more home runs than 13 MLB teams.

MOOKIE, YOU ARE UNREAL. pic.twitter.com/4h8RjYZuar
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) April 3, 2024

To that point though, it looked like Webb would do what he so often is able to miraculously do: gut out a nice outing. Two runs in four innings, or three runs in five innings isn’t the glamorous ingredient in the Have A Great ERA Pie, but it’s still a necessary one.

The fourth inning, however, had different plans in store for our trusty hero. Max Muncy, villain extraordinaire, led off with a double, and Teoscar Hernández walked. Webb was at 78 pitches with no outs, but dug in and retired James Outman.

With the game tied, Gavin Lux roped an RBI double to give the Dodgers a 3-2 lead. That stuff I said about how Betts’ home run wasn’t just Webb throwing a home run? Well, in an 0-2 count, Webb threw Lux a home run. The youngster kindly limited it to a double, which didn’t matter much when Enrique Hernández bopped a two-run single to make it a 5-2 game.

Bob Melvin, trusting his ace and not his bullpen, led Webb stay in and face Betts — a bold move that I liked, and for which he was rewarded when Betts flew out. But after Ohtani was walked on four pitches — and Webb’s pitch count had reached 96 — the night was over for him.

Which led to an almost heroic performance from the bullpen. And it led to Melvin tipping his hand to the attentive reader. The lesson we learned? The Giants really trust Landen Roupp.

The rookie, who had not pitched above AA prior to making the Opening Day lineup, came in to clean up the fourth inning. Usually a fourth-inning appearance for a reliever doesn’t feel like a high-leverage situation, but with the Giants trailing by a still-in-it-but-only-just margin of three runs, with two on and two out and the left-handed equivalent of Betts — Freddie Freeman — in the box, it felt like a huge moment. One swing could have ended the game before the halfway mark. One out would keep the Giants in it.

Roupp, a righty in his third professional game, got the out.

Then he stayed in for the fifth inning and got three more outs, all neat and tidy and in a row. Then he stayed in for the sixth inning, and even though he gave up a single and a walk before recording an out, stayed in. He struck out Enrique Hernández. And then he got the pleasure of facing Betts.

Betts has not had many moments this season where a pitcher looks his equal. I’m not sure he’s had any, truthfully. Outs that Betts makes these days are gifts that he gives pitchers as a token of appreciation for showing up and letting him embarrass them, and nothing more. It’s like when the University of Alabama pays the College of Southwestern Utah College at Northeastern Utah State $500,000 to kick their ass in the first football game of the year.

Except the 3-2 curveball that Roupp threw to Betts buckled him like my knees when I even think about playing basketball again.

Landen Roupp pic.twitter.com/HEZoZvqBws
— SF Gigantes (@SFGigantes) April 3, 2024

It was the kind of pitch that makes a batter go back to the dugout and proclaim loudly to no one in particular, who the hell is that dude?

It is very, very hard for a pitcher to make Mookie Betts look like this. pic.twitter.com/GOCw3Vf561
— Andrew Baggarly (@extrabaggs) April 3, 2024

Delightful.

With Ohtani up, Roupp was relieved of his duties for lefty Taylor Rogers, who needed but one pitch to end the inning. Through four innings Roupp has now given up just two hits and two walks, with no runs and five strikeouts.

It’s not a question of whether the Giants have something special in Roupp. It’s a matter of whether that something special will one day be a starter or a high-leverage reliever.

Rogers was relieved with two on and one out in the seventh, and Ryan Walker entered and made light work of the situation, before breezing through the eighth. It was a thoroughly dominant bullpen affair from a notably shaky group, against a historically terrifying group of hitters.

All the Giants needed to do was just match the run total that Webb had ceded. Which they came oh so close to doing.

Their initial two runs — the first of which tied the game, and the second of which led to a brief yet beautiful lead — were poetic. Melvin has made a point of turning Michael Conforto and Mike Yastrzemski into everyday outfielders instead of platooned ones, and those two have made a point of saying “thank you” at least 109 times a day.

The jury is still out on the efficacy, but there’s something to be said for looking at the forest rather than the trees early on in games. And for that they were rewarded on Tuesday.

The Dodgers used an opener in righty Ryan Brasier, before letting lefty namesake Ryan Yarbrough take over for a while.

In the second inning, Wilmer Flores led off with a double, then moved to third on a groundout by Thairo Estrada. It was an RBI situation for Yaz: a runner on third with just one out. He drew the type of walk that makes me think about how eyeballs really should be more closely considered when we discuss athleticism. It didn’t knock home a run, but it kep the line moving ... and even though Patrick Bailey struck out, Nick Ahmed delivered with an RBI single.

Just @NickAhmed13 doing his thing pic.twitter.com/59OVz61yau
— SFGiants (@SFGiants) April 3, 2024

The third inning presented a nearly identical situation to Conforto. Matt Chapman led off with a double, then took third on a deep fly out courtesy of Jorge Soler. Again a left-handed hitter stood in against a left-handed pitcher, with a runner on third and one out. Conforto fully delivered, lining the go-ahead single.

Let's gooo, Confortooo pic.twitter.com/Jp7jQBTv2v
— SFGiants (@SFGiants) April 3, 2024

He was then picked off, which is a bit of a metaphor for the Giants season right now, so don’t think about it too hard.

The Dodgers erased that deficit, and then built a 5-2 lead of their own. You’d be forgiven for thinking the game was over, though you’d be chided a bit first. Have a little faith, my friend.

And my goodness was that faith nearly rewarded. Soler — the Giants best power hitter, though we hadn’t yet gotten to see that on display — led off the sixth inning with a truly impressive home run. Not impressive because he hit it particularly well; impressive because he didn’t seem to hit it particularly well, and it cleared the fence anyway.

It was not, as Kruk would say, a swing in which he got both cheeks into it. This was a half a cheek swing, I’d say — two-thirds at best. Makes you excited to see both cheeks and I think I should stop talking now.

Jorge Soler has homered with the #SFGiants pic.twitter.com/6pjkM2XHhE
— SFGiants (@SFGiants) April 3, 2024

Conforto and Flores followed up Soler’s dinger with back-to-back singles. Suddenly the Giants had the tying runs at the corners and no outs. The situation was ripe!

Estrada made it a one-run game with a sharply-hit fielder’s choice that scored a run. And now it was time to platoon Yastrzemski — Melvin had made it through the earlier innings, and now found the situation where playing the advantage becomes necessary.

Representing the go-ahead run, Austin Slater jumped on a fastball across the plate and hit it 376 feet. Had he hit it a few more, we’d be rowdy and childlike in our Tuesday evening joy.

But alas.

Opportunity knocked again in the eighth, when Soler led off with a single and was replaced at first by the super-speedy Tyler Fitzgerald. Fitz was still at first when Flores came up with one out and drew a four-pitch walk. But seeing as how this game was at the Dodgers’ home, and not the Giants’, it was not for our dutiful heroes to open the door when said opportunity knocked. So instead, Estrada popped out and LaMonte Wade Jr., pinch-hitting for a pinch-hitter, grounded out on the first pitch he saw.

By the time the ninth rolled around, opportunity was faint and fleeting; merely a dream 20 minutes after waking up. Jung Hoo Lee lined a two-out single to keep his career-opening on-base streak alive, but Chapman went down swinging to end the game.

The Giants did not Beat LA. But for the first time since Saturday, they looked like a competent baseball team. And for the first time all season, they looked like a competent baseball team with a competent bullpen.

Silver linings are hard to come by when losing to the Dodgers, so don’t mistake that last paragraph as such. The Giants lost against everyone’s better judgement. And they’ll lose again tomorrow unless they win, in which case they won’t lose at all.

And I’ll be very happy.