FORT MYERS, Fla. -- One saying goes that the right shoes can make everything different; another asks you to walk a mile in someone else’s. If the shoe fits? Two left feet? Best foot forward? Regardless of which cliché you choose to run with here, there’s a symbolic way to apply it to Matt Manning kicking off his cleats in the infield on Monday.

The Tigers starter had just weathered a particularly rocky first inning against the Red Sox at JetBlue Park, during which he allowed four runs on three hits, issued a walk and uncorked a nasty hit-by-pitch … recording just one out before he was lifted in favor of Dario Gardea.

Some rules are a little relaxed in Spring Training, so once Gardea had recorded the final two outs of the first, Manning was allowed to trot back out for a second go. After his warm-up pitches, but before round two officially began, Manning waved for home-plate umpire Jeremie Rehak to approach. The front toe spike on his cleat had completely broken off, and he needed a new pair.

A clubbie ran out to trade him moments later and that made, everyone soon noticed, a world of difference.

“It kind of just got away from me in that one [inning], and [I just tried] to get back in the zone for the second inning,” Manning said following the Tigers’ 7-1 loss.

The shoes, of course, are purely symbolic, but the timing represented a switch flipped in Manning’s day. Prior to the swap, he’d opened the game with a solidly struck single from Kiké Hernández and then issued a four-pitch walk to Rafael Devers. He had a 2-1 count on Justin Turner when another fastball got away from him and struck Turner in the face.

Turner needed to be helped off the field after remaining on the ground for several moments, bleeding profusely and with a towel held to his face. He was transported by ambulance to a local hospital, where he received treatment for soft tissue injuries and was being monitored for a concussion. A Red Sox statement said later that he was “stable, alert and in good spirits given the circumstances.”

“It was a complete accident; ball just got away,” said Manning, who said he intended to reach out and apologize. “I got a swing and miss on a ball kind of up in the zone, so I tried to go back to it, and it just got away from me.”

If Manning had been rattled before by his lack of control, the Turner at-bat only compounded the issue. Manning leaned heavily on his breaking ball afterward, working outside to the next three batters -- a nine-pitch at-bat that resulted in a sacrifice fly and the only out he secured that frame, a run-scoring double and a two-RBI single -- before Gardea relieved him.

“We took [Manning] out because of volume,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “He was spraying the ball from the very beginning, hits Turner, comes back, can't quite find the strike zone again. We got [his pitch count] up in the mid-20s, and the rules in spring, we get to take him out and reset him and still give them an opportunity to build some of the volume.

“All in all, the second inning was better than the first, but not an ideal way to start.”

Once Manning stepped into his new spikes, though, he was the Matt Manning who led the staff with a 3.43 ERA in 12 starts last season. The 25-year-old coaxed a flyout to start the second and then tallied a pair of strikeouts sandwiched around a ground-ball single from Rafael Devers to put a bow on his outing.

“I relied on my slider a little bit more in the second inning, so it was kind of working on that,” Manning said. “And then, I got a strikeout on a changeup and then just really trying to dial in the fastball, getting my body down the mound and move a little quicker.”