DETROIT _ Jordan Zimmermann was struggling to find the words.
He was sitting at his locker inside the visitor's clubhouse at Kauffman Stadium earlier in the week in Kansas City and he was trying to explain just what his slider meant for his success.
He had just thrown his first bullpen session with a new grip and was optimistic about it. He knew it wouldn't be a quick fix but thought he found something.
"It's like a pen," he said. "It's like if a reporter came to work without a pen."
For the first two months of the season, Zimmermann has been a reporter without a pen. He allowed home run after home run, some of the hardest contact in baseball and could not get opponents off his low-90-mph fastball.
But now, it appears, he has found his pen.
Armed with a biting slider, Zimmermann drew up the best start of his season against the White Sox on Saturday afternoon, allowing one run over six innings as the Tigers won, 10-1, at Comerica Park.
For at least this day, Zimmermann played the part of a power pitcher once again.
He kept the White Sox off his fastball with a biting slider, gripped like he previously had with the Washington Nationals two seasons ago, and induced nine swings and misses with the pitch. He commanded the strike zone and as guided by co-pilot Alex Avila, offered the biggest glimpse of optimism for the Tigers' starting rotation going forward.
The team's offense, meanwhile, continued its hot hitting upon arriving home, a much different story against righty Miguel Gonzalez than a week ago, when he retired the first 18 Tigers in order at Guaranteed Rate Field.
The Tigers hit four home runs: Nick Castellanos and Alex Presley opened the scoring with back-to-back homers in the bottom of the second inning; Avila hit a two-run homer in the fourth inning and Justin Upton hit his 10th home run of the season in the eighth inning.
The Tigers totaled 12 hits. Five of their seven starters had at least two hits. Presley created a run on his own in the fourth inning, singling, stealing second base and scoring on a Jose Iglesias single. Presley went 3 for 4.
In the first inning, manager Brad Ausmus was ejected for the 11th time in his career, when he appeared to argue the umpires' reluctance to let him challenge a groundball out by Victor Martinez.
But the big star of the day was Zimmermann, and the optimism his improved slider brings to the Tigers rotation. It was perhaps most visible in the fourth inning, when he began an at-bat to Avisail Garcia with a back-door slider for a strike and sat him down with a swinging strike.
Zimmermann finished the inning by striking out Todd Frazier looking _ on a slider.
