Dylan Bundy pitches seven scoreless innings as Orioles top Texas

Orioles right-hander Dylan Bundy seems to keep getting better and better, and his starts keep getting more exciting. Tonight, he picked up his second victory as a starting pitcher with the longest start of his professional career.

Bundy held the Texas Rangers, the team with the best record in the American League, to one single over seven scoreless innings as the Orioles beat the Rangers 5-1. It was the start of a three-game series between AL division leaders.

Bundy had a perfect game through five innings and a shutout through 5 1/3 last Wednesday versus Colorado. He topped that tonight.

He took a no-hitter into the sixth inning before a clean single to center with two outs by No. 9 hitter Elvis Andrus. In his last inning, the seventh, Bundy went back out with 77 pitches and got a strikeout, groundout and flyout on 11 pitches to finish with 88. He needed just 21 pitches to roll through the first two innings and just 45 to get through the fourth. He improves to 4-3 with an ERA of 3.05.

Over his last 10 games since June 9, Bundy has pitched to an ERA of 1.78. He has thrown 35 1/3 innings allowing 24 hits and seven earned runs with nine walks and 43 strikeouts. The previous longest outing of his pro career was a 6 2/3 innings start for Single-A Frederick on Aug. 1, 2012.

While Bundy was holding the Rangers off the scoredboard, Texas right-hander Yu Darvish was doing the same against the Orioles through four innings.

But in the last of the fifth, Pedro Alvarez led off with a line-drive homer to right-center to break the 0-0 tie. Alvarez hit No. 14 on a 2-2 cutter. It traveled an estimated 372 feet, according to Statcast.

An inning later, the Orioles got another leadoff homer. This time it was Adam Jones. His high fly ball to left just cleared the fence for No. 21 and a 2-0 lead. It went 358 feet and was Jones' second homer in two games and his fourth in his last seven games.

In the seventh inning, the Orioles made it 4-0, hitting back-to-back homers for the 11th time this season as Alvarez homered again (No. 15) and Matt Wieters followed with a solo shot (No. 10). Alvarez's homer knocked Darvish from the game and Wieters greeted Dario Alvarez with a homer to right.

For Pedro Alvarez, it was his second multi-homer game of the year and the 12th of his career. It was the 14th time this year an Oriole produced a multi-homer game. The O's and Seattle are tied for the major league league lead with 14 each.

Down 4-0, Texas scored once off reliever Brad Brach in the eighth on two singles, a walk and a sac fly. But when a second Brach walk loaded the bases, Darren O'Day came on to get a huge third out to end the inning. O'Day has held opponent batters to 0-for-5 with the bases loaded this season after they went 1-for-13 last year. The Orioles completed the scoring on a Chris Davis broken-bat RBI single in the last of the eighth, and O'Day pitched the ninth to finish it out and record his third save.

The win means the Orioles will end the night in first place at 60-45. They have won two in a row since ending a five-game slide. They improved to 38-16 at home, where they have won 12 of 15 and 21 of their past 27 games. The Rangers fall to 62-45 and had a four-game winning streak snapped. The Orioles had lost nine of their last 10 against Texas until getting this win.