Gary Matthews Jr. and Torii Hunter homered in the first inning and Los Angeles beat the Baltimore Orioles 6-5 yesterday despite a poor outing by still-unbeaten Joe Saunders. Saunders (6-0) threw 85 pitches over five innings in the shortest of his seven starts. The left-hander allowed four runs and a career-high 12 hits, struck out one and walked none.
Saunders became the third pitcher in Angels history to start a season 6-0 or better, joining teammate Jered Weaver (9-0 in 2006) and Aaron Sele (7-0 in 2004). Ervin Santana gets a chance to join that list on Monday night at Kansas City. Scot Shields pitched a perfect eighth and Francisco Rodriguez got three outs for his major league-leading 13th save. (More MLB stories.)