DETROIT -- Ron Gardenhire walked into a distraught Tigers clubhouse after their ninth straight loss and told them to turn the music on.

Yes, the Tigers manager wanted it on.

“You know what, it’s over,” Gardenhire said after Miami's ninth-inning rally sent Detroit to a 5-2 loss and a winless homestand. “It’s a really hard one. You have to be grown men around here, and you have to hold each other up, keep each other positive, and that’s what we’re going to try to do.”

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These, as longtime Tigers skipper Jim Leyland used to say, are the times when a team needs its manager, not when a team is on a winning streak. As the Tigers digested how their 2-0 lead entering the ninth turned on five unearned runs, how two defensive miscues from young infielders provided extra at-bats and how their previously perfect closer fell on a grand slam from Garrett Cooper, Gardenhire was trying his best to keep his team together and prevent any finger-pointing.

“As I walked in and told those guys, this is really hard,” Gardenhire continued. “We had a ballgame. Our closer’s in there. We didn’t make a couple of plays. But it’s not an individual thing. It’s us. And if we lose being us, it’s not going to be good. We have to stick together. We have to have each other’s backs.

“There’s kids in there that are really upset. They know how the game went, they know what happened, and we have to have their backs. I have their backs, and I told all the players to have each other’s backs right now, because people are going to be coming from all kinds of sides at you. They want to know what’s going on. All we can do is go back out and try to play again tomorrow.”

They’ve been through times like this before, including an 11-game losing streak last year, but the math only goes so far. This year’s team, which worked hard to build belief and set its own high expectations in Spring Training, is finding ways to lose.

Thursday’s loss completed a three-game series sweep by the Marlins, who came to town with the fewest wins in the Majors, but had just swept the Mets. It also finished an 0-9 homestand for the Tigers, with a suspended game against Oakland from last Sunday to be completed in September.

Not since September 1996 had the Tigers gone winless in a homestand of nine of more games.

“We have a good group of guys in this clubhouse. Everybody really cares for each other,” said right fielder Nicholas Castellanos, one of the veterans in the clubhouse. “The last thing we’re going to do is point fingers and put blame on somebody else. We win games as a team and we lose games as a team. We get hot as a team and we struggle as a team. Gardy’s message was spot on.”

They were winning Thursday based almost entirely on pitching. Matthew Boyd, channeling his early-season form, stranded seven Marlins baserunners over a three-inning span for six scoreless innings. Ronny Rodriguez’s sixth-inning sacrifice fly broke through against Miami starter Trevor Richards for the game's first run. Miguel Cabrera’s eighth-inning RBI single added an insurance run.

On came Shane Greene, who was 15-for-15 in save chances but had pitched just twice since May 12 with Detroit struggling. Dawel Lugo’s error on a Harold Ramirez grounder led off the inning. Ramirez scored two batters later on Neil Walker's single. After a four-pitch walk to Jorge Alfaro, Miguel Rojas hit a potential game-ending double play to second baseman Rodriguez, whose fumble on the bounce gave Rojas the split second he needed to beat the throw to first.

“Looked like he just looked up a little bit instead of just burying his glove,” Gardenhire said. “That’s one thing we talked with him a lot about, you got to catch it first before you can do anything with it.”

Gardenhire issued just his eighth replay challenge of the season in hopes of a break, but the safe call stood, bringing up former Tiger Curtis Granderson to pinch-hit in his potential final plate appearance at Comerica Park. Once Rojas stole second base without a throw, the Tigers intentionally walked Granderson to face Cooper, who entered the day batting .167.

“We're trying to get a forceout at every base, which it looked like we needed today,” Gardenhire said. “He hangs one. They hit a grand slam."

Said Greene: “I just have to pitch better. It’s my job to close the door there, and I couldn’t do it.”

All five runs were unearned thanks to Lugo’s error. Much like the Tigers’ offensive woes, their defenders seemed to be pressing.

“When you’ve lost nine in a row and you’re not really particularly playing well, to say that you’re not going to press or try and do a little bit more obviously is ideal, but that’s very difficult,” Castellanos said. “We’re all human here, we’re all competitors. We want to do well.”

As low-key music quietly played in an otherwise silent clubhouse, the Tigers packed for a nine-game, three-city trip that begins with three games against the Mets, who had been struggling until they swept a four-game home series against the Nationals. The Tigers then go to Baltimore, where the Orioles currently own baseball’s worst record. The trip wraps up in Atlanta.

The Tigers could easily find their turnaround along the way. Or they could struggle.

“We’ll get through this thing. We’ve done this before,” Gardenhire said. “We lost 11 in a row last year. Are we there?”

No, reporters answered.

“All right, so that’s a positive.”