DETROIT -- For the first time in his MLB career, Luis L. Ortiz had to grin and bear it.

In four of his first five career starts, Ortiz kept the Pirates competitive, pitching 4 2/3 innings or more and allowing two earned runs or fewer. In the other, he was knocked out after two-thirds of an inning, allowing six runs in his final start of the 2022 season.

But in a 4-0 loss to the Tigers on Tuesday night at Comerica Park, Ortiz found himself caught between the two extremes for the first time as a big leaguer. After allowing two runs on three hits and two walks in the first inning, Ortiz -- already 32 pitches deep and clearly without his best stuff -- just had to keep pitching, getting as many outs as possible.

And when two more runs came home in the third on an errant pickoff throw from Ortiz and a wild pitch, the right-hander had to do it again: pitch through the inning not to seal a win or finish off a strong start, but simply because someone had to do it.

“My plan was to attack hitters,” Ortiz said through an interpreter. “Nothing went the way I wanted to. I just went out there and continued to compete and do my best in that situation.”

Ortiz went three-plus innings, allowing four runs (three earned) on seven hits and four walks while striking out three. Yohan Ramirez and Duane Underwood Jr. carried the Pirates through the rest of the game, combining for five scoreless innings.

“Ramirez and Underwood both did a good job, were really efficient with their pitches, so they were able to finish the game for us,” said manager Derek Shelton. “And defensively, we played really well. … It’s just offensively, we’ve got to get going.”

If there’s a silver lining to Ortiz’s start, it’s that both times he got into trouble, he gritted his way through it. With the bases loaded and one out in the first, Ortiz struck out Miguel Cabrera on a nasty slider, then escaped on an Andy Ibáñez flyout to deep center. With Cabrera on second and two runs already home in the third, Ortiz struck out Ibáñez with another tight slider, then induced an inning-ending groundout from Eric Haase.

The problems for Ortiz weren’t hard to spot: of his 81 pitches, only 44 were strikes. That’s a 54.3 percent strike rate, down from 67.6 percent his last start and 64 percent last season. His four-seam fastball averaged 96 mph, down from his 98.4 mph average last year.

“I was pulling open, flying open a little bit. But that’s stuff that I can work in the bullpen and be better next outing,” Ortiz said. “Flying open, that’s the thing. When you fly open, you can’t have all the power behind your fastball, and I think that’s what happened tonight.”

Shelton attributed Ortiz’s struggles to a combination of factors, chief among them his command.

“The fastball command was really inconsistent,” Shelton said. “When he tried to go away, he missed in. When he tried to go in, he missed away. His fastball command, he never got in sync.”

Compounding Ortiz’s command issues, though, was his diminished velocity, which Shelton saw as an attempt to regain control of his arsenal.

“I think it was more that he was trying to execute pitches,” Shelton said. “That’s where [the decreased velocity] really came from. With young players, sometimes when they’re inconsistent with their command, they take a little off to try to go after people.”

Of course, held scoreless on five hits and two walks, the Pirates didn’t exactly help out Ortiz. Pittsburgh put men in scoring position in the second, fourth and fifth, but the team failed to bring a runner home each time, finishing 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position and leaving six on base.

“We’ve got to figure that out,” Shelton said. “I wish I had an answer to that.”

For Ortiz, the loss was a study in contrasts between the two most important elements of pitching: the physical side and the mental side. Ortiz’s physical struggles led to four runs and an early exit. But staying firm on the mental side helped him through two jams and allowed him to pitch into the fourth instead of falling apart in the face of trouble from the beginning.

“Mental side, I thought he was fine,” Shelton said. “To me, he was just a young pitcher battling his stuff today.”