OAKLAND -- Jordan Lyles’ second stint in a Brewers uniform is off to a good start.

Lyles might not have brought the cache to Milwaukee that Zack Greinke toted to Houston, or Trevor Bauer to Cincinnati, or Marcus Stroman to New York, but Lyles did help bring some stability to a starting rotation in need of it Wednesday night by delivering five capable innings in a 4-2 win over the A’s at the Oakland Coliseum.

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Lorenzo Cain hit the game’s second pitch for a home run and Christian Yelich and Mike Moustakas also drove in a run apiece to back Lyles, who pitched sparingly out of the bullpen for the Brewers late last season but was re-acquired in a trade with the Pirates on Monday to help a starting rotation beset by injury and underperformance.

Lyles made it to the team hotel in San Francisco on Tuesday, but didn’t join his teammates until Wednesday, hours before a game in which he limited Oakland to one run on three hits with two walks and four strikeouts.

“I was definitely looking forward to coming into today,” Lyles said. “A breath of fresh air. A new start. A division race. New life, I guess you can say.”

It was a happy ending to a tough month. Lyles was 0-3 with a 15.00 ERA in four July starts for the Pirates entering Wednesday and winless with a 9.58 ERA in his last eight starts dating to May 28. But before sending Minor League reliever Cody Ponce to Pittsburgh for Lyles, the Brewers dug deeper into the numbers and saw that the stuff was virtually the same as at the start of the season, when he logged a 1.89 ERA in his first nine games.

With a tweak here or there, the thinking went, Lyles could be a solid contributor to a team unwilling to gut its modest farm system to make a splashier trade. And those subtle changes could be instituted immediately, since Lyles already had a relationship with manager Craig Counsell, catcher Manny Pina and so many others on the club from last season, when Lyles came to the Brewers via the waiver wire from the Padres and made 11 relief appearances in August and September.

“We’re not changing Jordan,” Counsell said. “Tonight was Jordan pitching really well. It was more just some suggestions kind of within your stuff. It was simple stuff. This was a Jordan Lyles game; this is how he pitches. He just did a nice job executing a lot of pitches.”

Asked whether it would have been different with an entirely new club, Lyles said, “Yeah. Definitely, going into today’s start, how we were able to go over game plans and just be familiar with the majority with these guys, it made the transition today easier than most. I trusted Manny tonight. He made things smooth for me today.”

Whether or not this rotation is strong enough to pitch the Brewers through a pennant race remains to be seen, but the past several days at a minimum supplied some stability. Lyles’ outing came a day after Adrian Houser rejoined the rotation and pitched five promising innings. At the same time, Gio Gonzalez said he expected to make his next scheduled start on Saturday in spite of a recent bout of shoulder tightness. A starting rotation that had been down to two healthy arms two days earlier was suddenly five arms strong again.

“We have [Brandon] Woodruff on the DL, we have [Jhoulys] Chacin on the DL. Those are two good starters,” said Pina. “Now we have Jordan with a fresh arm. That’s what we need to do, is try to be connected and more together when the players are injured.”

“I think we’re in a good spot,” Counsell said. “We had answers for all those kinds of questions and the first two games of this series we’ve done a nice job -- our starters have given up two runs in 10 innings. We’ll take that. They’re doing a nice job. The good news with Gio, there’s some stability there. We’ve just got to keep pitching well.”

Assuming no setbacks for Gonzalez in a bullpen session Thursday morning, the Brewers plan to start Zach Davies, Gonzalez and Houser in another critical three-game series against the Cubs this weekend at Wrigley Field. Lyles would then take the mound for a second straight start under odd circumstances.

He’s lined up to pitch Monday against his former team at PNC Park in Pittsburgh.

“I’m just excited,” Lyles said. “We’re 1-0 in my starts and I’m going to put the previous month behind me and look forward to putting some more quality outings out there for this team.”