Oh, he still gets perturbed. But a different spirit exists around the Giants , and around Zito Enterprises, Inc.

Neither the Giants nor Zito seem doomed to repeat losses nowadays. Instead, reasonable hope exists that they'll bounce back, stay afloat in the National League West race and entice you to enjoy their ever-improving shelf life.

Perhaps that's all because, despite Wednesday's 6-3 home loss to the Washington Nationals, the Giants still won the three-game series. Or did you forget about their victories on the previous two nights?

The Giants are 7-0-2 in their past nine series (really, no need to double check that).

Zito suffered his first loss in nearly a month and saw his record drop to a deceiving 1-3. He's pitching remarkably well, even if his past two painful seasons have set the Barry Bar remarkably low.

"Zito threw well. Another great effort by him," Giants manager Bruce Bochy said without a hint of insincerity. "He gave us a chance to win. We just couldn't do much offensively."

We've come to expect that on a daily basis from these Giants . It especially holds true when Zito pitches. They've given him only nine runs of support in his seven starts this season. Matt Cain can counsel Zito on how to handle that.

But comeback victories have become an important staple in the Giants' diet, and Wednesday's fate definitely wasn't sealed when Zito bailed in the midst of the Nationals' three-run seventh inning.

The Small-Ball Bandits our official trademark of these Giants rallied for a run in each of their final three innings. Alas, it was not enough, and Zito got tagged with the "L," his first since dropping his first two starts of the season, in San Diego and Los Angeles.

"I felt like I battled," Zito said, "and they just got the best of us in the seventh."

The Giants are getting the best out of Zito, and that's a much-needed positive vibe, one that has accompanied their 18-15 start. He's at least giving them more for their money than the previous two seasons, when he piled up 30 losses (to only 21 wins).

These days, however, fans aren't afraid to show up at the yard wearing a Zito jersey, and a few of his A's replicas were mixed in with the Giants variety in Wednesday's sun-splashed crowd.

When he headed for the diamond in that fateful seventh, he received a standing ovation from the crowd behind the Giants dugout. Some fans proudly pulled out a happy-birthday banner in honor of his 31 years on this planet. (If anyone's calculated how long he's drifted off this planet, please Twitter him.)

He entered his first career birthday start like the whiz kid he once was for the A's. He had allowed only four runs in his previous 26 1/3 innings, which calculates to a 1.37 ERA over that span. It dropped his familiarly outrageous ERA from 10.00 to 3.57.

But he was charged with four earned runs Wednesday, the final two coming on a broken-bat single by Elijah Dukes off reliever Merkin Valdez. That pumped up Zito's ERA to a still-respectable 3.89.

He didn't field his position well. He's pitched better. But he often worked his way out of jams, as he did in the scoreless first inning when hot-hitting Ryan Zimmerman grounded into a double play and Josh Willingham struck out.

Zito took little solace in contributing to the end of Zimmerman's 30-game hitting streak, instead reminding reporters that "the loss hurts."

But this loss felt different from those of 2007-08. Optimism abounded as the Giants rallied in the final frames.

When Pablo Sandoval provided an RBI single in the eighth, no one needed a reminder that a fourth straight come-from-behind win was possible. A night earlier, Sandoval was the one who hit a three-run, walk-off home run.

As for Sandoval's increasingly popular nickname, "Kung-Fu Panda," he said Zito gave it to him.

Funny, not too long ago, Zito was the one being called names. Not all of them were fit for print in a family newspaper.

Contact Cam Inman at cinman@bayareanewsgroup.com