Chris Bassitt's days of pitching in relief for the A’s might be over.

Carving out a hybrid role for himself last season after showing an ability to pitch well both in the rotation and out of the bullpen, Bassitt continues to look like a rotation mainstay as the club’s most impressive starter through the first nine games of 2020. On Sunday afternoon, Bassitt became the first A’s starting pitcher to earn a win this season, as his 5 2/3 innings of one-run ball -- combined with another stellar job by the bullpen -- paced the A’s to a 3-2 victory over the Mariners at T-Mobile Park.

In two starts this season, Bassitt has allowed one run with 12 strikeouts and one walk over 9 2/3 innings.

“We’ve just been trying to get him up to the pitch count,” A’s manager Bob Melvin said. “We were just looking for effectiveness for that amount of pitches, and to this point, he’s done it every time out.”

Ramón Laureano provided all the offense for Oakland, bashing a two-out three-run homer off Mariners reliever Anthony Misiewicz in the fifth. Laureano’s blast was set up one at-bat prior by Marcus Semien’s infield single, which positioned the A’s with runners at the corners and also knocked Seattle starter Kendall Graveman out of the game.

While the A’s offense, as a whole, is not quite yet firing on all cylinders -- Oakland entered the day with the third-lowest team OPS (.579) in baseball -- Laureano continues to swing the bat well. The center fielder is now slashing .290/.368/.548 with two homers and seven RBIs.

“He’s arguably our best hitter right now and he did what he was supposed to do,” Bassitt said. “If he gets a hit there, that’s great. But a home run is a whole different ballgame. It changed the whole complexion of the game. That was a big sigh of relief for everybody.”

Bassitt said he “had no clue where the ball was going” as he searched for his command in the first inning, beginning his outing by hitting J.P. Crawford with an errant curveball. The right-hander threw just 13 of his 26 pitches for strikes in the opening frame, but he limited the damage to one run and settled in, retiring the next 10 batters he faced.

“The first inning was a grind,” Bassitt said. “It was more about just throwing strikes. If I don’t walk guys, I have a good feeling about where the game will end up. I just told myself after the first inning to not walk guys and make them earn everything. It smoothed itself out.”

Sensing his outing was coming to an end as left-hander T.J. McFarland warmed up in the A’s bullpen with one out and a runner on in the sixth, Bassitt reared back and finished strong with a swinging strikeout of Kyle Lewis on a 94 mph fastball.

“I looked to the bullpen and saw T.J. warming up,” Bassitt said. “I knew [Daniel] Vogelbach was coming up and [Lewis] was my last hitter of the game. I said, ‘If you’re gonna hit me, you’re gonna hit my best pitch.’ I knew that was my last batter.”

A late start to Summer Camp for Jesús Luzardo was the only reason Bassitt started the year in the rotation. Though Bassitt was considered to be behind the rest of the starters in terms of workload entering the season, he is quickly catching up, as he followed up four scoreless innings in his first start with another impressive outing on Sunday. Bassitt limited Seattle to one run on four hits. He did not issue a walk and struck out seven batters. He missed plenty of bats, generating 39 swinging strikes and 11 whiffs over an 83-pitch outing.

With a pitch limit of 85 on Sunday, Bassitt should get up to a full workload in his next start, which will likely come Friday in a showdown with the Astros at the Coliseum.

“Good command, slows you down with the curveball -- he was, overall, really good today,” Melvin said. “And he needed to be, because we didn’t have much room for error.”

Things tightened up in the eighth as a solo homer by Lewis off Yusmeiro Petit cut Oakland’s lead to one. But as it has been able to do all year to this point, the A’s bullpen shut the game down in relief of Bassitt -- allowing one earned run over 3 1/3 innings -- with Liam Hendriks recording his third save of the year and second in as many days with a scoreless ninth.

The A’s bullpen has now combined for a 1.79 ERA over 40 1/3 innings to begin the season.

“They’ve been great all around. They’ve been great and keeping us in every single game,” Laureano said of the relievers. “Now, we just gotta hit the ball on the barrel and find some holes.”