DETROIT >> Saturdays have not been kind to the Tigers. Plain and simple.

The 11-1 thumping they took from the Reds at Comerica Park was their seventh straight Saturday loss. That’s 27% of their losses.

Go figure.

“Really?” said Jake Rogers. “That’s a stat for you. I wouldn’t have even thought twice about that. Something about Saturdays, I guess. How are Sundays?”

Sundays are much better. Rubber matches in series have been much better. The Tigers will have a chance to win their eighth straight three-game series on Sunday. But the fact that Rogers finished the game as the Tigers’ pitcher tells you how this one went.

“I enjoyed it,” said Rogers, who last pitched in 2021. “I don’t know if I looked like it.”

The Tigers, specifically starter Jake Flaherty, paid the price for violating one of the foundational tenets of their own organizational philosophy: He didn’t dominate the strike zone.

He was cruising along, getting through the first two innings in 20 pitches. Then he started issuing free passes. At first, they were just a nuisance, pushing up his pitch count, causing him some self-inflicted stress.

Elly De La Cruz’s 402-foot missile of a home run leading off the fourth had nothing to do with walks. Still, he walked two in the third. He walked another in the fourth. And by the time the fifth inning rolled around, he was at 67 pitches and wobbling.

“Just battling command,” he said. “I was able to make some adjustments and make some pitches. Even still, we were one pitch away from getting out of it.”

He walked two batters in the fifth, around a couple of singles. One run was in and the bases were loaded. Flaherty’s stress became distress.

Pitching coach Chris Fetter came out to give him a breather. But Reds catcher Tyler Stephenson jumped a first-pitch knuckle-curve and lined it over the bullpen in left field — grand slam home run.

“I left a curveball inside and Stephenson put a good swing on it,” said Flaherty, who did not second-guess the pitch choice. “If we execute it better, the results might be different. Can’t do the what-if game. The result wasn’t a matter of pitch selection. It’s more about the execution.”

Spencer Steer ended Flaherty’s day two batters later with a solo homer to left-center.

“They did a good job laying off some tough pitches and when they got some in the zone, they hit a few out of the park,” manager AJ Hinch said. “I thought Jack got into the game really well, six up and six down. Then the leadoff walk in the third and it kind of starter to unravel.”

Flaherty, who had allowed just six earned runs in his last five starts covering 30 innings, ended up with seven runs, three homers and five walks on his ledger in just 4.2 innings.

“Just get back to executing like we did in the first two innings,” Flaherty said. “It’s not like we have to go back to square one or anything. Just get back to executing and then get on another run with the next one.”

Before the Reds’ outburst, though, Flaherty and Reds starter Brady Singer were trading zeros when the Tigers ran themselves out of an early lead.

Javier Báez led off the third inning with a walk. Trey Sweeney, who was in a 5-for-52 rut with 17 strikeouts in his previous 21 games, blasted a double into the cutout in right-center.

Third base coach Joey Cora, even though there were no outs, waved Báez home. Normally on a ball hit to right-center, the second baseman is the cutoff man. But not if your shortstop is De La Cruz.

“He’s pretty much extraordinary at everything,” Hinch said. “They reversed that (the cutoff man) and I don’t blame them. They want him to take every outfield throw for that reason.”

De La Cruz’s throw home was clocked at 98.3 mph by Statcast. Báez was out by a lot.

“Tough swing of events there,” Hinch said.

Aggressive base running has been a big part of the Tigers’ success.

They lead baseball in successfully going first to third (54 times) and with a 55% success rate on extra bases taken.

But this one was hurt, especially since it looked like Báez banged his shoulder on the play.

“We had two things going on there,” Hinch said. “I was seeing if we’re going to review it and I didn’t see Javy initially stay down. Once we knew we weren’t going to review it, he was up and walking off. It was a little bit of a scare.”

The trainers worked on him between innings and he finished the game.

“I will have him in the lineup tomorrow,” Hinch said. “If he can’t go, then you will see that he’s been scratched.”

The Reds piled on in the eighth against veteran John Brebbia. They scored three runs off him in the ninth inning Friday (he only got one out), and in the eighth inning Saturday, No. 9 hitter Matt McLain dinged him with a three-run homer.

Brebbia and Hinch had an extended, back-and-forth conversation after the eighth.

“He wanted to take the brunt of the rest of the game,” Hinch said. “He wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to go to somebody else out of the bullpen with where we were with the score. He was volunteering to go back out and I was telling him no.”

Brebbia threw 22 pitches after throwing 31 Friday night. With the Tigers down by more than 10 runs, Hinch could use Rogers in the ninth.

“He told me he’d kept (the velocity) under 70,” Hinch said. “He lied. I told him, 74 (mph) is no 70.”

Stephenson led off the inning with a double, which led to the 11th run and it also dissuaded Rogers from debuting his infamous knuckleball, the one he bedevils his teammates with in catch play.

“I think that’s the first pitch I ever threw,” Rogers said. “My dad when I was 10 years old said, ‘Hey, throw this.’ I’ve been throwing knuckleballs forever. Who knows if it’s good or not. It’s good in catch play and I’ve always been kind of wanting to.

“But, you know, it’s fun for me to be out there and enjoying it but a lot of times it’s when we’re getting our butts kicked. Not a great time to be joking around.”