DETROIT — As he lay in his hotel bed hours earlier, Orioles right-hander Kevin Gausman committed to changing his pitching mechanics on the fly for Wednesday’s matinee.

With every pitch from the windup in Wednesday’s 6-5 loss to the Tigers, he brought his hands all the way behind his head before going into his delivery instead of bringing them to rest in front of his face, as he’s traditionally done. He pitched into the seventh inning and allowed two runs.

Two things have been established with Gausman as a big league pitcher: He has a great arm, and he’ll tinker as much as he needs to unlock it. And then he might tinker some more. This latest adjustment, he said, is one with potential.

“It was good,” Gausman said. “A couple times, I hit my hat on the way up, so I need to figure that out. I think it’ll come with reps, being a little bit smoother and being more on time every single pitch. But it’s definitely something I can build on.”

The adjustment was born out of his dry throws off the mound Tuesday at Comerica Park, his day-before-starting ritual.

“I just kind of started messing around with it,” Gausman said. “And it felt really good. I felt like I was landing in the same spot every time, and just felt like I was really reaching toward home plate. I told [pitching coach Roger McDowell] yesterday that I was going to do it, and he kind of challenged me a little more and said, ‘No, you’re not.’ And whenever someone challenges me that I can’t do something, I’m probably going to do that.”

His problem, he said, is that he tends to leak toward home plate too quickly in his delivery instead of staying over the mound as he begins it. This solution “just clicked,” he said.

“I’m a professional athlete. I can do this,” he told himself.

The day he chose to do make his delivery change featured a 36-degree first-pitch temperature and came as the Orioles asked him to stop a four-game skid, their most recent win coming when he beat the Toronto Blue Jays a week ago. That they fell, 6-5, was not his doing.

Gausman allowed nine hits, and left with two runners on and no outs in the seventh inning, but the only runs came on solo homers by Miguel Cabrera and Jeimer Candelario.

He also dispelled some questions about his fastball velocity. The pitch sat 94-96 mph in the sixth inning after starting out in the 91-92 mph range, with manager Buck Showalter indicating that he’s taking something off the pitch and trying to sink it more with a two-seam grip instead of overpowering hitters, as he has sometimes gotten into trouble doing.

Between the new pitch, the new delivery, and now this new tweak, it’s a lot to rely on. But Showalter sees the progress. After Gausman allowed six runs in four innings in his first start April 1, he has a 3.94 ERA (seven earned runs in 16 innings) over his three most recent starts, albeit with a 1.5 WHIP.

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