DETROIT -- Sometimes, at the most inopportune moment, the ball finds you.
Then, sometimes, it finds you again.
Welcome to Nicholas Castellanos' Friday evening at Comerica Park.
Between repetitions at third and a slimmed-down body tailored towards a quicker first step, he put in the work to try to improve. That should make his three-error game in Friday's 7-3 loss to the White Sox difficult enough.
Even during his worst times at third base over his first three seasons, he had never endured a multi-error game. Add in the fact that two errors played a key role in the White Sox go-ahead rally, and well, he's had better days.
"Of course it's disappointing," he said. "It stinks. But what are you going to do about it? It happened. If you dwell on it and think about it, it's just going to continue to affect you. Tomorrow is a brand new day."
Castellanos became just the fifth Tiger in the last 20 years to post a three-error game, according to STATS. Ryan Raburn was the last to do it, committing three errors at third base against the Royals on Aug. 16, 2009.
Others include Dmitri Young at first base on July 31, 2006. It was his last game in the field as a Tiger; he finished out that season at designated hitter. Carlos Pena also had a three-error game at first base on Sept. 10, 2003. Dave Borkowski had three errors in five innings as a pitcher on Aug. 23, 1999.
"It doesn't happen very often," manager Brad Ausmus said. "Obviously Nick's not happy about it. He takes pride in what he's doing over there at third base. But if you talk to anyone who's played in the Major Leagues for any period of time, they have a game like this that they'll never forget."
The tone for Castellanos' evening began on a hit, when Avisail Garcia's third-inning chopper down the line allowed him to leg out an RBI infield single on a ball Castellanos couldn't barehand. His first error came on a sixth-inning bouncer that popped out of his glove before he could close it.
The back-to-back errors in the eighth followed Melky Cabrera's leadoff single, allowing the White Sox to load the bases with nobody out in a tie game. Both had a chance to turn into double play.
Castellanos said he wasn't thinking about turning two as he tried to field the ball. Todd Frazier's grounder left him no time to think, only react.
"That was hit too hard, where I'm just [trying to] stop it," Castellanos said. "Maybe if it was like a slow-hit ground ball, but he hit that pretty well."
Two pitches later, Garcia followed with another ball, this one with topspin. In hindsight, Castellanos might have played it differently.
"I should've taken a very steep angle and tried to get it off of the second hop," Castellanos said. "But again, as soon as it's off the bat, I'm thinking double play, so I cut it this way and I got kind of stuck with an in-between hop."
Thus, instead of two outs and one runner on, or none, the Tigers faced a bases-loaded, no-out jam. Geovany Soto's two-out single converted the mistakes into runs.
"[Tigers coach] Omar [Vizquel] came up to me in the dugout," Castellanos said, "and said, 'Hey, I've had two two-error games and a three-error game. Tomorrow is a new day. You've been working hard. You've been making great strides. Just put it behind you.'"