LOS ANGELES >> Jake Rogers walked into the clubhouse after a tough, 5-4 loss to the Dodgers on opening day Thursday and made a beeline toward the hitting coaches.

“As soon as I walked in after the game, I was like, ‘Man, that was an incredible game,’” Rogers said. “A lot of great at-bats against really good pitchers. If we keep doing that, we’re going to be a force to reckon with.”

The Tigers’ trio of hitting coaches, Michael Brdar, Keith Beauregard and Lance Zawadzki, hammered home the theme of having patient at-bats against Dodgers lefty starter Blake Snell.

Snell pitches with precise command of his four-pitch arsenal. He doesn’t just throw strikes when he wants to; he throws strikes at the edges of the zone when he wants to. And, when he gets ahead of hitters, he can throw pitches just off the edges when he wants to.

It’s the reason he’s won two Cy Young awards and earned nearly $112 million over his 10-year career.

If you are over-aggressive against him, he will eat you up. But the Tigers’ lineup of seven right-handed hitters didn’t feed into his plan.

They stuck to theirs.

“The game plan was to keyhole a little bit and make him come to us,” designated hitter Spencer Torkelson said. “I’m looking for my pitch and it doesn’t matter who is on the mound. If I don’t get it, I’m going to compete up there and take it.”

Torkelson, for the first time in his career — he didn’t rule out that it might have been the first time in his life — walked four times, including three times against Snell. The one ball he put into play was a 423-foot homer off the back of the Dodgers bullpen in left field against lefty reliever Alex Vesia.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen too many four-walk games out of anybody and then cap it off with a homer,” manager AJ Hinch said. “He swung the bat really well and controlled the zone. Everything about his offensive approach tonight was awesome.”

Sometimes in baseball, you can win the battle and lose the war. The Tigers’ game plan against Snell and the Dodgers’ bullpen worked. Snell walked four batters and needed 92 pitches to get through five innings.

Tigers hitters had 15 at-bats with at least five pitches. They had 11 three-ball counts, with seven against Snell. And they had runners in scoring position in six of the nine innings.

But there was one fatal flaw in the execution: They ended up 0-for-15 with runners in scoring position.

“We gave ourselves opportunities, and that’s all you can ask for,” Torkelson said. “Some days, we’re going to be 8-for-15. Today, we were 0-for-15 … If you keep putting yourself in those positions over 162 (games), we’re going to come through more than we’re not.”

The way the Tigers hung in against one of the best, if not the best — certainly, the most expensive — bullpen in baseball was reminiscent of last season’s late surge into the postseason.

“We just kept fighting back,” Rogers said.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts had a 4-2 lead and the matchups he wanted over the final four innings. And the Tigers came within one pitch of thwarting them.

He used right-hander Ben Casparius against a pocket of right-handed hitters in the sixth. Hinch countered with left-handed hitters. Zach McKinstry led off with a walk and Rogers followed with a single.

That set up a pinch-hit opportunity for lefty Kerry Carpenter with two on, but Casparius got him to pop out to short. It seemed like a win for Roberts at that point. Hinch’s only remaining lefty option on the bench was shortstop Trey Sweeney, and right-handed hitters Javier Báez and Manny Margot were out of the game.

And Roberts had lefties Vesia and Tanner Scott warm and ready.

Vesia struck out three batters in the seventh but served up the homer to Torkelson. In the eighth against Scott, McKinstry laced a triple to right-center — the first triple Scott has allowed a lefty since 2022 — and Carpenter hung tough on a 1-2 pitch and hit a sacrifice fly to left.

In the ninth, right-hander Blake Treinen was summoned to close it out. Gleyber Torres singled — his second hit of the game — and stole second. After Riley Greene struck out, Torkelson drew his fourth walk.

Sweeney, Hinch’s last card to play, drew a pinch-hit walk to load the bases. That swung the matchup advantage to the Tigers — lefty Colt Keith against Treinen.

Keith got ahead 3-0 and took a wheelhouse sinker middle-in for a strike. Treinen followed that with a dirty cutter that broke late into Keith’s hands. The pitch broke his bat and the ball was popped foul to Freddie Freeman at first base.

That close.

“Just a great game,” Rogers said. “Super fun. Obviously, we didn’t come out on top. But other than that, it was good.”

The task doesn’t get easier. The Tigers will have to deal with a couple of Japanese-born right-handers — Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki. Both threw upper-90s four-seamers with diabolical splitters.