OAKLAND -- When a team is going through as miserable of a stretch as the A’s are right now, sometimes it can feel like even the baseball gods are against you. Case in point: Saturday’s 3-2 loss to the Reds at the Coliseum.

Entering the ninth inning with a one-run lead, Jeurys Familia took over looking to finish off a one-run victory for the A’s. Though he pitched himself into trouble by allowing a single and two walks, the right-hander was one out away from closing it out. Then came a backbreaking moment, the type that is about as bad a stroke of luck as a team can get.

On the first pitch Familia threw to Jake Fraley with two outs and the bases loaded, the outfielder hit a slow broken-bat grounder that appeared to be materializing as a routine play for first baseman Ryan Noda to end the game. Instead, the ball took a bounce off the first-base bag, sailed into right field and allowed the game-tying and go-ahead runs to score.

“We were in control literally until two outs in the ninth, and then the ball hits the base,” said A’s starting pitcher Kyle Muller. “Pretty unfortunate.”

Leading the game from the time Aledmys Díaz and Jordan Diaz drove in a pair of runs on back-to-back singles in the second until two outs in the eighth, it looked as if the A’s would avoid another piece of unwanted history as Muller was in line for the win. But Familia’s blown save negated that, and the A’s went through their 28th game of the season still without a win recorded by a starter. The streak is now the longest stretch of a team not having a starter pick up a win to start a season in MLB history, surpassing the 2022 Pirates, who began last season with 27 such games.

“No,” Muller said when asked if the streak is starting to wear on the A’s pitching staff. “Obviously, every starter’s goal is to go out and do their best to help the team win. We all just want the team to win. If we do our job, that’ll come. Nobody is really pressing for it.”

Entering Saturday, Oakland’s starting pitchers were 0-15, with their combined 8.95 ERA as a group, by far the worst of any team in the Majors. Against Cincinnati, though, Muller turned in a performance worthy of a better result, tossing five innings of one-run ball on five hits and two walks with three strikeouts.

“He competed,” manager Mark Kotsay said of Muller. “You could see he wasn’t really trusting his fastball, but he was using his offspeed pitches to get outs. He got through and gave us a chance to win.”

Muller was aided in a multitude of ways by the return of Ramón Laureano.

In what was his first game back from a left groin injury that kept him out of action since April 17, Laureano wasted no time reintroducing himself with another highlight reel play on defense. Chasing down a fly ball near the Reds' bullpen hit by Kevin Newman in the second, Laureano caught it on the run after racing an estimated 27 feet per second, according to Statcast, then set his feet and fired an 87.2 mph seed to third base, where Jace Peterson easily tagged out Tyler Stephenson trying to tag up from second.

Oakland’s two-run rally in the bottom of the second was sparked by Laureano’s one-out double off Reds flamethrower Hunter Greene.

“His energy and effort level was displayed,” Kotsay said of Laureano. “Busting to get the ball and making an unbelievable throw to get the runner, that’s what we expect and that’s how he came out and performed.”

That determination will be needed as the A’s trudge along what continues to be a brutal start. Now 5-23 on the year, their 23 losses set an MLB record for most losses before the end of April.

“I think about the difficulty of just, at this point, the challenges we’ve faced as a team and that these guys face as individuals on a daily basis going out and competing at the highest level,” Kotsay said. “Having a play that, if the ball doesn’t hit the base and the ball goes in his glove, we win the game and I’m sitting here with a different kind of attitude. Thus is life, right? When you’re hit with the biggest challenges, it’s how you respond to them and how you stand up to those challenges that make you a better person. Hopefully, you learn from those experiences and move forward.”