DETROIT — The curveball remains Framber Valdez’s calling card. It garnered great praise from Mike Trout and kept Brent Strom believing Valdez could succeed as a major league starter. Valdez actualized his pitching coach’s premonition. He heads an Astros rotation with higher paid players and better recognized names. 

Valdez is the closest thing to automatic Houston possess in its starting rotation. He fractured his left ring finger in February and got back by May, defying doctors who told him he could not pitch this season. Valdez has a 2.11 ERA after his first six starts. If not for his lineup’s listlessness and the sport’s new seven-inning doubleheader format, Valdez would have finished seven innings for the fifth straight start on Saturday against the Tigers. He settled for six.  

“I’m not surprised they’ve been able to hone him in and get him in the strike zone,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said after Detroit’s 3-1 win that snapped the Astros' 11-game winning streak. “He’s nasty … The hitters notice. He doesn’t get the recognition, but he’s put together seasons back-to-back that will open some eyes and get him more attention.”

Hinch’s starter out-pitched Valdez, but Houston’s spin-happy southpaw deserved a better fate. His offense did not allow it. Detroit rookie Casey Mize muzzled the Astros lineup like no pitcher in the past three weeks.

The Astros exhausted Mize but failed to deliver a fatal blow. He needed 59 pitches to procure the first nine outs, dodging disaster throughout. Houston stranded five baserunners in the first three innings. Jose Altuve and Michael Brantley began the game with consecutive singles on two-strike sliders. Neither advanced a base. Carlos Correa drove in the team’s only run with a single during the third, giving Valdez little room to fail.

Valdez’s final line does not reflect the way he pitched. Four of the six hits he surrendered were singles. Sixty-five percent of his pitches were strikes. The Tigers took 42 swings against him. Eleven were whiffs. Hinch stacked his lineup with seven righthanders and two switch-hitters. Valdez has only faced 16 lefthanded hitters all season. 

Opponents are bound to continue the strategy. Valdez cannot combat righthanders solely with his curveball, no matter how devastating the pitch is. One-pitch pitchers get solved. Valdez is transforming into something more. He is demonstrating far better control of his sinker and showing renewed faith in his changeup. 

Valdez threw a season-high 30 changeups on Saturday. It comprised 17.5 percent of his pitch usage entering Saturday’s start. During each of Valdez’s first three seasons, he used the changeup less than 10 percent of the time.

“I feel a lot more confident with the changeup this year,” Valdez said through an interpreter. “I feel like I can throw it with more intensity and I have more movement to it. It’s gotten to the point where I feel like I can strike guys out with that pitch.”

Variation will help Valdez, but execution is still the difference. Valdez has allowed four home runs this season. Three came against the changeup, including the go-ahead blast in Saturday’s game. Houston’s offense handed its starter only one run of support, shrinking his margin for error. The one gaffe he made decided the game.

Damage arrived from the most unlikely source, a man only in Detroit due to Friday’s rainout.

The Tigers summoned Zack Short as their 27th man for Saturday’s doubleheader. He arrived with 16 major league plate appearances and without an extra-base hit. Short struck two against Valdez. 

“We were hurt by a guy that we really didn’t know,” manager Dusty Baker said. 

Valdez allowed the leadoff man aboard in three of the six frames he worked. Short demolished a double over center fielder Chas McCormick’s head to start the third. Isaac Paredes bounced an infield single to start the fifth. Correa charged the ball and attempted a barehanded play, but bobbled it. Correa had little chance to get Paredes even with a clean play. 

Jake Rogers sacrificed Paredes to second base before Short stepped in. Valdez started him with a changeup that caught the lower half of the strike zone. Home-plate umpire Sam Holbrook called it a ball. Short spoiled a sinker foul before Valdez tried again with the changeup. It sat flat and fat over home plate. Short sent it into the right field seats for his first major league home run.

“That was really the only mistake that he made,” Baker said. “Other than that, he was good. He was very good.”