Through five drama-free innings on Friday at Globe Life Field, Cole Irvin had an answer for everything. He hadn’t allowed a runner past first or a hard-hit ball in play. He hadn’t even given up a hit.

Then the sixth began, and suddenly the left-hander was all out of answers.

His no-hitter was quickly undone, the A's squandered a two-run lead and the evening as a whole unraveled, leading to a 3-2 loss to the Rangers. Irvin and Sergio Romo combined to allow the first six batters of the sixth to reach safely, and Texas scored all its runs on consecutive swings. Given how quiet the A’s offense has been lately, that’s all it took to set them back for good. 

“We’re not doing enough offensively to support what our starters are doing,” said manager Bob Melvin, whose team has dropped six of eight. “We just couldn’t get a big hit. We’re not playing great right now.”

Irvin was dealing for most of his night, which started with an acrobatic foul-territory catch by Tony Kemp. The next eight Rangers went down in order, as Irvin crafted three perfect innings to open the game.

“I mean, you could’ve been standing there next to me, telling me where to throw the ball, and I probably could’ve hit a gnat that was sitting in [catcher Sean Murphy’s] glove,” Irvin said in regard to his smooth beginning.

He'd lose the no-hit bid on an infield single from Eli White leading off the sixth. A single and a hit-by-pitch (Irvin's third of the game) quickly loaded the bases. Melvin provided his pitcher one more chance to help himself, but Irvin left a slider over the middle of the plate and paid for it with a run-scoring single from Andy Ibañez. 

Romo, inheriting a bases-loaded situation, surrendered a two-run single to Adolis García on his first pitch, dealing the final blow to Irvin’s pitching line that had been near-perfect only minutes before: five-plus innings, three hits, three runs and three hit batters. Oakland was still very much alive at that point, but a lack of life from the offense was its undoing once again.

“The margin of error’s pretty small,” Melvin said. “I mean, [Irvin’s] got a no-hitter going into the sixth and it looked like he got tired pretty quickly … It’s a 3-2 game [in the sixth]; we have to feel pretty good about that.”

The A's did respond to the lead change by manufacturing a bases-loaded situation in the seventh courtesy of three walks. In stepped Matt Olson, and he laced a fastball into right field -- where it was gobbled up by the Rangers’ infield shift and converted for an easy out to end the threat.

“Hit it well,” Olson said. “Just bad aim.”

Olson’s evening was a microcosm of Oakland’s offense: plenty of bark, little bite. The slugger had four of the game’s five hardest-hit balls -- all 106.5 mph and above -- but only one hit and no runs or RBIs to show for his efforts.

As a team, the A's were victims of hard-luck double plays in the first two innings, going 1-for-6 with runners in scoring position, ultimately leaving seven runners on base. Otherwise, the A's seven hits could’ve produced a lot more than they did.

Entering Friday, the A’s ranked 28th in on-base percentage (.293) and 27th in slugging percentage (.357) over their past six series, in which they went 0-5-1.

One half-inning's worth of slip-ups from the pitching staff stood out against the Rangers, but only because the A’s offense failed to pick up the slack. Still, the belief in the dugout is not wavering -- and a series win before the All-Star break is still up for grabs.

“The offense has left them out to dry here and there, for sure,” Olson said. “We’re struggling to find ways to win games right now, which is obviously not ideal, but we’ve talked about it a lot with y’all and nobody’s panicking around here.”