When Barry Zito came back to baseball after a year off and didn’t make the Oakland A’s 40-man roster, he didn’t turn down the offer to play in Triple-A.

He just wanted to play baseball.

Now a fixture in the Nashville Sounds’ five-man starting rotation, Zito is doing exactly what he set out to do in his return to the mound.

“My main goal after taking a year off was to enjoy the game again,” he said.

Even after 15 years of pitching in the big leagues, it took Zito some time to get his rhythm back.

“It took a while for me to get my feet under me — probably four to six weeks,” he said about his slow start. “It takes a while to get back in that five-day routine for your body, arm and all those things. … I’ve just been getting into a better routine.”

In spring training, Zito was limited to being a reliever. In his first month of the regular season, he posted a 5.97 ERA as a starter.

“It was an adjustment,” the veteran pitcher said. “Just getting used to the lifestyle here in Triple-A. I wasn’t in Triple-A for 15 years.”

Zito appears to be adjusting well to the new lifestyle in the minors. In 11 starts since May 26, he has a 2.35 ERA, including 10 quality starts.

However, on Sunday, Zito’s streak of six consecutive quality starts was snapped in his shortest outing of the year. He allowed four hits and four runs, including a three-run home run, in just three innings.

But for Zito, one bad outing doesn’t define him as a pitcher. He didn’t come back to baseball to prove anything to anyone other than himself.

“I’m just not a pitch-with-a-chip-on-my-shoulder guy, never have been, so trying to prove something to the world, for me, is not beneficial,” he said.

The veteran signed what was, at the time, the largest contract for a pitcher when the San Francisco Giants inked him to a seven-year, $126 million deal in 2007. He spent a year away from baseball following the end of that contract.

Zito comes to the mound with a pitch-by-pitch mentality.

“If I can do what I know my best is every pitch, then I’ve done my job and I feel happy with the game,” Zito said. “I try to let results come second to that. It’s not always easy, but ultimately all we can control is executing the pitch as a pitcher.”

As the Major League Baseball trade deadline approaches and transactions occur every day, Zito has a chance of being called up to the A’s.

And if he got the call, he wouldn’t think twice.

“Absolutely I would go,” he said without hesitation. “It’s a higher level of the game.”

And with his day-to-day approach, Zito could make one last run to the big leagues.

“As long as he is willing to put the work in … and he has … his routine is second to none. His attitude, his mental approach and the way he prepares himself tells me he is ready and willing to go back to the big leagues when the phone call comes,” Sounds’ pitching coach Don Schulze said.

If the call comes, Zito will be ready, but if it doesn’t, he will continue to enjoy the game.