DETROIT -- The Tigers pleaded ignorance on the streak. That might have been by design.

“I did not know that,” Niko Goodrum said when told how many consecutive games the Indians had won in their American League Central rivalry.

“Wow, I didn’t know it was 17 straight,” a surprised JaCoby Jones said earlier in the week. “Wow, that's crazy. But it is what it is. We just have to go out there. It’s a new year, new team, new everything.”

That approach comes from their manager, who has set the tone to put last season behind them.

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“I don’t really worry about what happened last year. We got beat by a lot of people last year,” Ron Gardenhire said when the streak was brought up to him Wednesday. “We’re trying to turn the page and move forward. Cleveland’s a good baseball team. We were in a lot of games with them last year. We just didn’t get it done. So we’re starting anew.”

It’s a sound mindset, but the best way to instill it is with a win over the Indians. And as Domingo Santana’s three-run homer carried out to left field, part of a six-run fourth inning off Iván Nova that sent the Tigers on their way to a 10-5 loss Friday night at Comerica Park, the streak was bound to come up again.

Until it’s history, it’s historic.

“That’s a good team,” Gardenhire said. “You’ve gotta make pitches. And if you miss, we saw what happened all night.”

Cleveland’s 18th straight win over Detroit tied the Yankees’ 18 consecutive victories over the Orioles for the longest active streak in baseball. Only the O’s 23 straight wins over the Royals from 1969-70 lasted longer in the divisional era.

“It’s definitely frustrating,” said Daniel Norris, who relieved an ineffective Nova. “It seems like they kind of have our number. But the good thing Gardy said after the game, he came in the clubhouse and said, ‘The good thing about baseball is we’ve got tomorrow, and we can get them tomorrow.’ So that’s what we’re looking forward to.”

The last time the Tigers beat the Indians, Josh Harrison was their leadoff hitter and Hanley Ramirez was Cleveland’s designated hitter. That was April 10, 2019, and the Tigers were off to an 8-4 start. Detroit lost the rubber match of that series the next day when Shane Bieber beat Spencer Turnbull, and the Indians have been victorious ever since, outscoring the Tigers by a 117-37 margin -- including six shutouts, the most by a team against Detroit in a season since the 1954 White Sox.

This year’s Tigers (9-8) have five more games against the Indians over the next nine days, starting with Saturday’s repeat meeting between Bieber and Turnbull. For Detroit to turn this season’s strong start into a playoff chase in an eight-team AL field, it has to get wins over Cleveland.

Another solid outing from Turnbull would go a long way towards that. The Tigers had a 3-2 lead Friday on Goodrum’s two-run homer off Aaron Civale, whose four runs allowed were one more than Detroit’s total off him in three starts and 20 2/3 innings last season. But when Civale stranded Victor Reyes on third by retiring the middle of the Tigers’ lineup in order, preventing a bigger inning, the Indians were poised to answer.

Asked if that was a missed opportunity, Gardenhire said, “That’s an understatement. The guys we had coming up, yeah, we expect those guys to knock him in.”

Then came Cleveland’s outburst against Nova, who finished with eight runs allowed on five hits and two walks over 3 1/3 innings. Five of those runs came on homers, including Franmil Reyes’ 462-foot homer that cleared the shrubs and nearly hit the walkway in left-center field for two runs to open the scoring in the second inning.

“Wow, that was a long one,” Gardenhire said. “[Nova] just kind of spun it up there, and the kid smoked it to center field. After that, I think he was kind of searching to find himself again. Tough night for him.”

Nova’s ERA rose to 8.53 after four starts; 13 of his 18 runs allowed have come in his last two games. Norris led a procession of Tigers relievers with an encouraging outing of long relief, his fastball approaching 95 mph, but Detroit couldn’t get close from there, despite Cameron Maybin’s ninth-inning home run -- the first of his third tenure with the Tigers. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Maybin became the ninth player in Detroit's history to homer in three decades, joining the likes of Miguel Cabrera, Ty Cobb and Al Kaline.