Ubaldo Jimenez becomes 11th Dominican-born pitcher with 100 wins as O's top Nats

On the way to his 100th career win tonight, Orioles right-hander Ubaldo Jimenez walked five, struck out five, drove in a run and weathered an ugly defensive inning.

So his night was eventful.

Jimenez also allowed just one unearned run over six innings, becoming the 11th Dominican-born pitcher to record 100 wins as the Orioles beat Washington 4-1 at Nats Park.

In winning for the ninth time in their last 13 games, the Orioles improved to 2-2 on the year versus the Nationals and to 74-76 for the season. It was just the second loss in nine games for the Nats, who are 78-72.

Jimenez walked two in the first inning and issued leadoff walks in the second and third innings, but kept Washington off the board until allowing one run during a fourth inning where the Orioles made two errors. He allowed just three hits and improves to 12-9 with an ERA of 4.16 with a 110-pitch outing.

In four career starts at Nats Park, Jimenez is 4-0 with an ERA of 0.92. He is now 6-1 with an ERA of 2.32 in eight career starts against Washington. Jimenez tonight became the 600th pitcher in major league history with 100 victories.

In the O's second, Caleb Joseph and J.J. Hardy drew one-out walks from left-hander Gio Gonzalez. They scored on RBI singles by Jimenez and Nolan Reimold. Jimenez drove a 94 mph fastball to right-center for his second RBI and hit of the year.

Center fielder Junior Lake dropped Clint Robinson's fly ball for a two-base error in a Washington fourth that also included an error by second baseman Jonathan Schoop. But when Gonzalez bunted into a 2-5-4 double play, Jimenez got out of trouble. What had the look of a big inning did not turn out to be that.

After that ugly inning on defense, the O's quickly added to their lead. Manny Machado singled with one out in the fifth for his 500th career hit. Chris Davis and Steve Pearce followed with back-to-back RBI doubles for a 4-1 lead. That was Davis' 110th RBI. Gonzalez allowed four runs over 4 2/3 innings to take the loss and is 11-8 with an ERA of 3.94. Over his previous three starts, he was 2-0 with a 1.47 ERA.

After Pearce's RBI double, 14 of the last 15 Orioles were retired. But their pitchers made the lead stand up with a combined three-hitter. Brad Brach replaced Jimenez in the seventh and fanned three in two scoreless innings. Darren O'Day, not Zach Britton, pitched the last of the ninth to record his fourth save.

The O's staff slowed down a Nats offense that had scored 193 runs (6.0 per game) their past 32 games.

In the second game of this series on Wednesday night, Chris Tillman (9-11, 5.19 ERA) pitches for the Orioles against right-hander Max Scherzer (12-11, 2.90 ERA).