DETROIT -- The disappointment on Matthew Boyd’s face was obvious as Tigers manager Ron Gardenhire made the long trudge from the dugout to take the ball. Boyd wanted to be the stopper of this Tigers skid, as did Daniel Norris before him, and Spencer Turnbull before him.

As Boyd walked back to the dugout, the lefty received a surprising amount of applause from the Tigers' fans on the third-base side, some of them rising to their feet for an ovation. The way the Tigers have struggled all week, including Saturday afternoon’s 4-1 loss to the A’s at Comerica Park, there’s a recognition how little room for mistakes Tigers pitchers have these days.

“The fans were wonderful,” manager Ron Gardenhire said. “Big crowd out there, and they were loud. Our guys were up for it. It just didn’t turn out our way.”

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It’s so little room for error that Boyd paid for three pitches that didn’t particularly look like mistakes. His home run pitch to Nick Hundley was a slider low on the outside corner, which Hundley sent to the opposite field and just over the right-field fence for his first home run of the season and a 2-0 A’s lead.

“I thought it was a routine popup,” catcher Grayson Greiner said. “I guess the ball’s carrying to right the last couple days. It was a good two-strike pitch, down and out of the zone. Guy went down and hit it out.

Said Boyd: “Maybe I could’ve thrown that slider with a little more depth. Sometimes you get away with those. Sometimes you get a favorable result with those.”

Jurickson Profar’s RBI double in the fifth was on a slider near his shoetops, which he laced into left-center field. Chad Pinder’s solo homer in the seventh was on a breaking ball low and inside, which he golfed 435 feet to left-center as Boyd and Greiner watched.

“The curveball I wanted to be down and away, instead of in,” Boyd said. “You don’t want to get nitpicky. You don’t want to get beat with your fourth pitch.”

Two of the three run-scoring hits off Boyd were on sliders, on which opponents had been batting .192 with no home runs against this season. It marked the second consecutive outing in which opposing hitters seemed to be on Boyd’s slider, a pitch Astros hitters missed only once last Monday. Houston hitters, however, seemed focused on making Boyd throw it in the strike zone. Aside from the run-scoring hits, the only other pitches from Boyd that A’s hitters chased out of the zone were a pair of inside fastballs that resulted in popups.

Oakland leads the Majors with 26 home runs off left-handed pitching.

Boyd (4-4) didn’t walk anyone Saturday. He struck out eight, half on the slider, but left having allowed four runs on seven hits over 6 1/3 innings. The way the Tigers have hit this week, it was too much damage to overcome, though it kept them close enough to take a bite out of their Major League-best record in games decided by three runs or less, now 17-10.

Manager Ron Gardenhire and his staff stayed late Friday night struggling to figure out how to ignite a struggling offense. They emphasized discipline after video showed Tigers hitters chasing 35 pitches out of the strike zone in Friday’s loss. They juggled the batting order, putting Josh Harrison back in the leadoff spot and moving rookie third baseman Dawel Lugo up to second.

None of it sparked them. Detroit’s lone run off A’s starter Daniel Mengden came on a fourth-inning wild pitch that scored Ronny Rodriguez, whose one-out double was the Tigers’ lone extra-base hit out of five total.

“We fouled off pitches. We made them work OK, nothing great,” Gardenhire said. “A couple guys still need to pick it up; that’s obvious. But we’re getting there. I can accept that game -- not the loss, but I can accept the intensity, the way we played.”

The way the week has gone, it’s progress. The Tigers have been outscored by a 52-12 margin over their six-game losing streak. They haven’t led at any point since winning last Sunday’s series finale at Minnesota. They’ve lost 15 consecutive games against the A’s since May 5, 2017, when leadoff hitter Andrew Romine, designated hitter Victor Martinez and starting pitcher Michael Fulmer led them to a win in Oakland.

Gardenhire wanted to see an elevated effort level on Saturday, and he felt like he did. As A’s first baseman Matt Olson snared Christin Stewart’s ninth-inning grounder to start a game-ending double play with the potential tying run on deck and players at the top of the dugout, the ending was sudden.

“I hate to see the guys down. I want to see them having fun,” Gardenhire said. “My job is to create an atmosphere here at the ballpark where they love to come in. When you’re struggling like we are right now, I can see the difference in how they feel. I want to get that feeling back. That’s my job, to get that feeling back. It takes a couple of things [to] go our way, a break here, a break there. Maybe a no-hitter; I don’t think we can lose with that one. Today was a start.”