Orioles interim manager Tony Mansolino tried to take a page out of the Detroit Tigers’ playbook for the rubber match Thursday.

The Tigers by no means invented the opener concept, but they have found success with that strategy, especially against the Orioles. And when facing Detroit ace Tarik Skubal, who subjected Baltimore to six shutout innings earlier this season, Mansolino felt it necessary to try anything.

So he sent out Keegan Akin, a former starter, to open the game. The thought, Mansolino said pregame, was to force them to move their lineup around by going right-handed heavy or creating left-on-left matchups for Akin to get through before passing the game off to Dean Kremer.

Although Akin got through the first, because it took him 27 pitches, the Orioles got only one inning out of him.

Mansolino’s strategy then backfired, because it was the bottom of the lineup that gave Kremer trouble, the bottom four contributing all four runs. With Skubal’s masterful seven-inning, three-hit performance, the Orioles never got within reach as the Tigers won 4-1 to take the series at Camden Yards.

The Orioles are 13 games below .500.

“We missed him twice, both games last year, and I think we probably paid the price for that this year and we got him both times,” interim manager Tony Mansolino said of Skubal. “We battled. We put the ball in play. He’s doing that to everybody right now, so tip your cap to him.”

Kremer cruised his first time through the lineup, but it was his second time facing the bottom four that got him. In the fourth, Dillon Dingler hit a home run off a middle-middle cutter, Colton Cowser attempting to rob Dingler but ending up crashing hard into the wall instead. Cowser, who just returned from a fractured thumb, was checked by trainers but remained in.

From there, the Tigers had back-to-back singles before Parker Meadows took a high fastball into right-center field to make it 4-0.

“He just didn’t have the split that inning,” Mansolino said. “The split was up. He just couldn’t get the thing down, and he got himself into trouble that one inning. And I think, when we see Dean not have his best outings, it probably revolves around one bad inning.”

For an Orioles team that struggles against even mediocre left-handed pitching, this deficit already appeared to be too much to overcome, but they at least saved their bullpen by having Kremer pitch seven innings. They had just two hits at this point — singles from Gunnar Henderson in the first and Dylan Carlson in the second. Carlson would get the only other hit off Skubal, adding another single in the fifth, as the Tigers ace struck out six.

“I think maybe after the game, you understand why the hitters didn’t score eight today. ... When you go in the game, I think the way you’re beating that guy, it’s a walk, it’s a double, it’s a three-run home or something along those lines,” Mansolino said. “You got to get guys on base, right? And the guys battled, punched out only six times against probably the best pitcher in baseball right now. I think you kind of take some solace in that.”

With a right-handed reliever replacing Skubal in the eighth, the Orioles got a little momentum. Carlson hit a leadoff home run for his third hit of the night, and Cowser followed with a walk. But that would be it, and no one besides Carlson would get past first base.

This article has been updated.