Tarik Skubal spent the night before his Major League debut watching Matthew Boyd fight off two nightmarish innings to keep the Tigers in a game. He also watched a veteran Major League pitcher struggle to get Isaac Paredes to chase a pitch. He could relate to the latter.

“I feel like he just doesn't ever get fooled,” Skubal said of his Double-A Erie teammate before the Tigers’ 7-2 loss against the White Sox on Monday night. “He knows the strike zone so well, it's actually incredible. Whenever I faced him in Toledo [at the alternate training site], it's like I might as well just throw three strikes and hope he hits it somewhere that's an out, because there's no fooling him, there's no setting him up. He's very composed. He's a good hitter. He just hits. And I'm excited to watch him play.”

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Gio González knows the feeling. The 13-year veteran had the 21-year-old Paredes in a 1-2 count in his second Major League at-bat with the bases loaded in the fourth inning, having fouled off a changeup at the bottom of the zone, and tried to get him to chase. The high fastball didn’t tempt Paredes, so González put a changeup just below the zone, below the pitch he had fouled off. Paredes didn’t offer, running the count full as Paredes tried to control his nerves.

“My first at-bat, I just wanted to step to the plate and know what it feels to be at home plate, in the batter’s box, at a Major League field,” Paredes said through translator Carlos Guillen. “Obviously I was pretty nervous, and I just wanted to know what was going on. So the first at-bat, I couldn't do what I wanted. But the second at-bat, fortunately, I was more comfortable and I got it.”

With runners in motion, González put a fastball at the high outside corner. Paredes not only put his bat on it, he dunked a soft line drive into left field. It wasn’t glamorous, with a 70.5 mph exit velocity, but it plated two runs.

“Patient hitter, great hitter, great bat-to-ball skills,” Skubal accurately forecast.

It was the best at-bat the Tigers had on a night when they struck out 12 times, 10 of them against González. And the at-bat came from the youngest player to grace a Tigers starting lineup since Avisail Garcia in 2012.

“He’s a young man, but he’s played a lot of games down in his native country in Mexico and against some talented people and pitchers that know how to spin the ball,” manager Ron Gardenhire said. “He’s not overwhelmed by any means.”

Paredes, called up earlier in the day, eventually did chase out of the zone Monday, missing on a changeup from hard-throwing reliever Zack Burdi. But his Major League debut showed the advanced plate discipline that marked his climb up the Tigers’ farm system ever since he arrived from the Cubs in the 2017 trade that sent Alex Avila and Justin Wilson to Chicago.

“It’s something that I’ve been developing,” Paredes said before the game. “I’ve been surrounded fortunately by players with a lot more experience than me, so I’ve heard them talk about that, and I listened. I pay attention to all of those details so I can have that knowledge when I’m on the field.”

His sense of location isn’t always perfect, at least out of the box. When he drove to Detroit Metro Airport on Sunday to meet the Tigers’ flight to Chicago, he was so early that he was searching for where to find the team plane. Fellow prospect Casey Mize, who was also called up, pointed him in the right direction.

At that point, Paredes thought he was going to be on the taxi squad. General manager Al Avila later told him he was joining the active roster. Paredes didn’t realize he was starting Monday until his wife texted him the lineup from social media.

In the end, Detroit needed more hits like his. Though Tigers pitching allowed six White Sox home runs, including three of Boyd’s first 10 batters, all but one of them were solo shots, allowing the Tigers to stay close until Luis Robert’s second homer of the night -- a two-run drive in the eighth -- put the game out of reach.

Boyd became the first Tiger in modern history to give up three home runs in four innings or less with nine strikeouts, according to baseball-reference.

Nine of his 12 outs came via strikeout, thanks in part to an improved slider that drew 11 swings and misses and a changeup he mixed in the second time through the order. But three of the seven balls put in play against him cleared the fence, including two homers from Tim Anderson. He gave up back-to-back White Sox homers to begin his outing for the second consecutive start, both off fastballs to Anderson and Yoán Moncada.

“First two hitters, I just didn’t have the same finish on the fastball,” Boyd said. “We made the adjustment and got more efficient as it went on. But obviously, you put yourself in a pretty big hole there throwing 60, 70 pitches in the first two innings.”