When Nick Pivetta walked Detroit Tigers leadoff man Matt Vierling on four pitches, it looked like the Red Sox were in for a long night.

After starting 12 minutes late, too, because of the pregame ceremony for the newest Red Sox Hall of Famers.

Ultimately, the game only took two hours and 35 minutes. It just seemed longer because the Tigers blanked the Red Sox 5-0, holding them to two hits and one walk.

It was a fascinating pitchers’ duel early on. After the leadoff walk, Pivetta retired the next 13 batters. The first out of the game was a fielder’s choice. The following eight were strikeouts, matching the franchise record set by Roger Clemens on April 29, 1986.

“I was able to lock it back in and continue to do that, and that’s all I can ask for,” said Pivetta, who was unaware he’d tied the club record.

“The Red Sox have been around longer than I have,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m sure there’s a ton of team records to beat, but yeah, it’s cool to do.”

Pivetta and Tigers starter Jack Flaherty dueled until the top of the fifth, when Akil Baddoo broke up the Red Sox righty’s no-hit bid with a towering home run. Pivetta rebounded to get the last two outs of the inning, but he wasn’t long for the game. When he gave up a leadoff triple to No. 9 hitter Carson Kelly, intentionally-walked Riley Greene with one out, and gave up an RBI single to Mark Canha, Alex Cora made a change.

Pivetta’s night ended after 5.1 innings, charged with two earned runs on three hits, a walk, an intentional pass, and nine strikeouts. Though it was his second time recording nine or more strikeouts this season and he induced a game-leading 16 swings-and-misses, he felt his performance was “in-between.”

“Liked the way I started, didn’t like the way I finished,” he said. “Needed to keep the team in the game better than I had. Disappointed in the leadoff triple, I think that one hurt the most.”

“He threw the ball well, all of a sudden, they made some adjustments,” Cora said. “It felt like they started getting on the fastball … but overall, he threw the ball extremely well.”

“I was locating all my pitches earlier on,” he said, agreeing with his manager’s assessment that he’d been able to use all his pitches. “Curveball was much better, sweeper I was locating earlier on, and I felt like my fastball command was on-point as it has been. Just led to some late hits, unfortunate.”

Speaking of hits, the Red Sox only collected two all night, and struck out 14 times, one shy of their season-high.

Flaherty took a perfecto into the bottom of the fifth, when Rafael Devers led off with a walk. It would prove to be a blip in the radar; the Tigers starter got three quick outs to strand the Sox slugger, and kept his own no-hit bid going.

“Getting more swings and misses than ever,” Cora said of Flaherty, who induced 15. “He kept us off-balance.”

Finally, with one out in the bottom of the seventh, Rob Refsnyder singled through the left side of the infield, and the long no-hit nightmare was over. Flaherty got the next batter, Devers, out and then his night was over, too.

“Nick kept us in the game,” Refsnyder said. “Flaherty just did a great job of keep us on our toes.”

His hit might’ve been the spark that ignited a comeback flame, if not for how the top of the eighth played out. With the Tigers only up 2-0 – a somewhat surmountable deficit for a club that entered the day 7-19 when opponents score first – Cora sent his set-up man to the mound.

Instead, the Tigers lit up the usually-lights-out Chris Martin and put the game even further out of reach. The veteran righty gave up a one-out double to Vierling and a first-pitch two-run Green Monster homer to Greene to double Detroit’s lead. He got Canha to strike out swinging, but Gio Urshela added a solo Monster bomb of his own before Martin finally got the last out.

In the bottom of the ninth, the Red Sox got one last chance. Jarren Duran led off the inning by reaching first on an error by the shortstop, and by the time Devers came up to bat with two outs, he’d advanced to third on a fielder’s choice and defensive indifference. Instead, Devers struck out, and the Red Sox were shut out.

Flaherty’s overpowering performance, coupled with Martin’s unexpected implosion, the lack of comeback mystique the Red Sox have displayed for the vast majority of the season (7-20 when opponents score first), and their struggles in series openers (6-13) and at Fenway (2-16 in first games of their homestands since the start of 2023), put this game to bed long before the final out.

The Red Sox entered the series 16-6 against sub-.500 teams, and the Tigers arrived in Boston with a 27-28 record. Boston had won 10 of their previous 11 meetings dating back to April ‘22, and was 22-9 against Detroit since the start of ‘18, the second-best record against the Tigers during that span. The Red Sox are 9-1-1 in series with the Tigers since June ’17, and 6-1-1 when hosting the Tigers at Fenway since the start of ’15.

But these aren’t the Tigers of years’ past, nor is this one of the Red Sox squads that dominated them. Detroit is emerging from a long and painful rebuild. They’re no longer a punching bag for teams like the Red Sox, who struggle to fire on all cylinders consistently.

“It’s just frustrating,” Refsnyder said. “Good starts, feel like we’re wasting them.”

“We gotta put it together all-in-all as a team. I mean, seems like we’re usually one side or the other side,” Pivetta said. “We have to come together as a pitching staff so that we can support the hitters as much as they have supported us.

“Luckily, we still have a lot of season left, but we do need to put the pedal on the metal and kind of put everything together.”