Chen on his outing, Wieters on Chen, Snider on the win

Wei-Yin Chen was on top of his game tonight and maybe that had the Philadelphia Phillies batters hitting on top of the ball.

On his way to pitching eight scoreless innings, Chen rolled through the first six innings on just 67 pitches. The Phillies hit just one ball out of the infield in the first six frames with 11 outs on ground balls and five on strikeouts mixed in.

"I felt great and all my pitches were working today," Chen said through his interpreter Louis Chao. "(Matt) Wieters called a great game for me and my teammates played fantastic defense behind me.

"I followed Matt's lead and today early in the game he called quite a few off-speed pitches. That was kind of different from my games before, but I tried to do it and was happy I was able to do that."

Chen's slider was a good pitch for him tonight as he improved to 3-4 with an ERA of 2.89 and recorded his team-leading eighth quality start.

"Early in the season my slider was not working that well, but I tried to make some adjustments in the bullpen sessions and I think the work I did there is working."

Chen gave up two singles in the eighth inning, but Nolan Reimold in right field threw out Chase Utley trying for second base for the club's major league-leading 21st outfield assist. It led to Chen leaving the mound after the eighth to a nice ovation.

"It's been a while since I had that, so I feel great. But the reason I had that was my teammates - we had great offense, great defense and a great bullpen. That is why we won that game," Chen said.

This was Chen's first scoreless outing since Sept. 5, 2014 at Tampa Bay, and the eight innings tied his career high. He has allowed two earned runs or less in nine of his 13 starts.

"He was strong tonight," catcher Matt Wieters said. "He was ready to go from the get-go. He went out there with a plan and he carried it out. Command of his off-speed was big and he was able to locate some fastballs. They were being aggressive, coming out swinging, so locating that first pitch was big for him. When you get early outs that sets you up to get deeper in that game."

Wieters' three-run homer in the sixth off Aaron Harang turned a 1-0 O's lead into a 4-0 advantage.

"After I chased a pitch on 1-1, I wanted to get something that was going to stay in the zone and he threw me a breaking ball that was probably a lot more zone than he wanted to throw. Right now I am seeing the ball pretty well."

Wieters has hit safely in six of eight games, batting .333 with two homers and seven RBIs since coming off the DL.

He was asked tonight if he knows yet when he will be able to catch on back-to-back days?

"No date yet, just kind of see how it feels. We'll have to go through a slight progression of some long toss in the day in-between. It's better to be playing every other day than push it too hard and have to take some time off. I just want to play as much as I can to help this team. Arm feels good. I feel confident I can make every throw," he said.

Travis Snider scored the game's first run tonight. He doubled with two outs in the fifth and scored on J.J. Hardy's single.

"Just trying to get a good pitch to hit and let J.J. drive me in. Matt came up with a big three-run homer for us that gave us a comfortable lead. What can you say, Wei-Yin dealt for eight, bring in the big boy in the ninth and get it done," Snider said.

The Orioles team ERA is now 2.63 over the last 12 games and the O's bullpen has given up just one run over 25 1/3 innings in the past seven games for an ERA of 0.36. The Orioles (32-31) are 9-2 their last 11 games and can tie a season-high mark going two games over .500 if they win Tuesday night.