Mize faces growing pains in loss 

The look on Casey Mize's face as he watched his first home run allowed this season soar 438 feet out to right field summed up the pitch as well as his outing Saturday. The Tigers right-hander was a strike away from a clean first inning, having retired his first two batters and putting Matt Olson in an 0-2 count, before Olson ran the count full and hit a 95 mph fastball over the plate. Mize didn’t need to watch it land, 438 feet from home plate, before turning around and asking for another ball.

After back-to-back pitches in the heart of the zone met a similar fate in the second inning, Mize had a talk on the mound with catcher Grayson Greiner.

“After the homer, [Greiner] comes out,” Mize said. “And I said, ‘Hey, we’re going to pitch in and we’re going to throw breaking balls.’”

The way Oakland’s pitching has held down Detroit’s offense, it was too late of an adjustment to change the Tigers’ fate in an eventual 7-0 loss to the A's. But it was timely enough to make the rest of the outing a learning experience.

“I need to execute the slider better, and I need to pitch in more,” Mize said.

Expect more of those lessons as the season unfolds. As good as Mize looked while shutting down the Astros for his first Major League win last Monday, he’s still going to have days like Saturday, like many others have had before him, as he learns on the job.

“I don’t want to compare it to the Houston start,” said manager A.J. Hinch, whose team has lost the first three games of the four-game series by an 18-4 margin after sweeping by the Astros with a 20-8 margin. “I think today, [Mize] got to two outs, two innings in a row, and then they ambushed him and put up quality at-bats.”

Five days after Mize shut down Houston’s offense for seven innings, the former top overall pick allowed five runs in as many innings, including a career-high three homers. The differences between the two outings go beyond the score to the metrics.

The hardest-hit ball Mize allowed in Houston was a Yuli Gurriel single at 101.9 mph, per Statcast. By contrast, four of Oakland’s first 10 batters put balls in play at 104 mph or harder, three of them for home runs. All three homers came on pitches Mize left in the zone, all of them after Mize retired the first two batters in the first and second innings. His softest contact all game was 81 mph.

Similar to Olson, Mize was ahead in the count against ninth batter Aramis Garcia, a strike away from ending the second after a single extended the inning. After a high fastball, Mize’s slider off the plate -- a pitch he used to fan Elvis Andrus two batters earlier -- didn’t get a reaction from Garcia, running the count full.

Mize went back to the slider for a second straight pitch. This time he hung it, and Garcia hit it 398 feet to center for his first homer of the year.

“I yanked a couple leading up to that, just wasn’t pleased with it,” Mize said. “So, it was a 3-2 pitch: All right, this is your pitch, trust in it, let’s throw it for a strike. And then it was just elevated middle.

“I need to throw it for a strike, but it still needs to be a quality pitch. And it wasn’t.”

Mize’s next pitch had a similar issue, a 95 mph sinker over the plate. The notoriously patient Mark Canha pounced, hitting it deep to left for a 4-0 A’s lead.

“That’s one of those situations where, if we go in right there, he’s probably not doing that much damage,” Mize said. “They were just comfortable out over the plate early.”

To Mize’s credit, he attacked the strike zone, tossing his first walkless outing since his Major League debut last August. When he nearly lost Ramón Laureano from a 0-2 count that ran full, he delivered a 95 mph fastball on the inner half of the plate for a called third strike. But his previous 2-2 pitch to Canha hit him, putting him on base to advance on Olson’s single and score when Matt Chapman beat out a potential inning-ending double play.

Mize still finished with 11 swings and misses and 19 called strikes over 95 pitches. He’ll try to take Saturday’s lessons into his next outing next weekend against the Royals.