Five days after Matthew Boyd said he took a step in the right direction, he took a leap against another familiar American League Central nemesis. But he still fell to 0-4, in part because the latest Cleveland pitching phenom gave him no margin for error.

“To do that in a debut, that's impressive,” Boyd said of Triston McKenzie’s one-run, 10-strikeout Major League debut after Saturday’s 6-1 Detroit defeat at Progressive Field. “Hat's off to him. It’s like these guys have an embarrassment of riches with their starting rotation and the guys that they keep running out there.”

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A day after the Tigers beat Cleveland to end a 20-game losing streak in the rivalry, their skid is back at one. It’s a game that arguably got away, squandering by far Boyd’s best outing of the season and maybe his most impressive start since the first half of 2019.

“That was the good Matt Boyd throwing,” manager Ron Gardenhire said. “He was in command out there. He wasn’t taking nine hours to throw a pitch. Everything that we’ve been talking about and he’s been working on, he did it out there. He did his job, gave us an opportunity. We didn’t score enough runs.”

In many ways, Saturday night looked like a throwback to last season, when many solid starts were all for naught from a lack of run support before opponents pulled away late. It’s a reversal from many other games this season. Detroit’s bullpen has been the strength of the staff, if not the entire team early on, but it has taken a loss and a blown lead over the last four days.

Boyd’s attack against Cleveland was a reversal from their meetings last year. The left-hander went 1-1 with a 5.50 ERA in three starts against the Indians in 2019, but suffered from five home runs over 18 innings. Boyd leaned heavily on his fastball and slider against the Indians last summer, and their hitters were able to sit on a pitch and look for a mistake.

Gardenhire and pitching coach Rick Anderson have implored Boyd to mix in his changeup more often. With Cleveland struggling on offspeed pitches this season, Saturday was a good time to unleash it.

It was Boyd’s go-to pitch when he broke into the Majors with the Blue Jays in 2015, and for his first couple seasons in Detroit. It was his out pitch well before that.

“My dad was always my pitching coach and he never let me throw a breaking ball until my freshman year of high school when I started throwing a curveball. So my changeup was always my best pitch,” Boyd said. “It's just been like, 'Hey, we've got chocolate cake in the fridge,' with my slider. I gotta stop eating it so much. I know that there's other stuff in there that we can go to as well.”

Boyd threw changeups with just 6 percent of his pitches last season, and raised that rate to 9.1 percent going into Saturday. On Saturday night, he threw changeups on 23 of his 90 pitches, according to Statcast. By comparison, he threw just 10 sliders.

The change worked, inducing eight swings and misses, including five of his six strikeouts. He used it ahead and behind in the counts. He even threw back-to-back changeups to fan Roberto Pérez for his sixth strikeout to lead off the fifth inning.

By that point, he was pairing the changeup with the curveball, a pitch he revamped in the offseason but threw just 29 times in his first five starts, usually to start an at-bat. He threw 10 curveballs Saturday, six for called strikes and another for a swing and miss.

“The curveball and the changeup really play off each other,” Boyd said. “We establish the fastball and then the curveball. When it's coming in straight down, it's right on that fastball line. When you come back with it and go with the changeup after that, it's always a good combo.”

Boyd went into the sixth inning nursing a 1-0 lead on Willi Castro’s fourth-inning solo homer off McKenzie, his old teammate at Double-A Akron in 2018. Once José Ramírez shrugged off back-to-back changeups on his way to a five-pitch walk to lead off the sixth, however, John Schreiber began warming up with right-handed slugger Franmil Reyes in mind.

“All of our charts said he was the right guy for that part of the lineup,” Gardenhire said. “It just didn’t work out.”

Francisco Lindor’s third hit off Boyd put the go-ahead run on with nobody out, and Carlos Santana was a pitch away from loading the bases. Boyd, however, went back to the changeup to coax the incredibly patient Santana into a lineout to right field on Boyd’s 90th and final pitch.

Schreiber fanned Reyes but couldn’t finish off Jordan Luplow, who was just 1-for-16 with three walks off right-handed pitchers. The next batter, Domingo Santana, sent Schreiber’s 2-2 pitch through the middle and into the gap in left-center to clear the bases.

That put McKenzie in line for a well-deserved win in his Major League debut. The lanky 23-year-old right-hander, making his first start at any level since 2018, struck out 10 Tigers, nine of them on his fastball.

“Tip your hat to that kid,” Gardenhire said. “He threw the ball great.”