Bartolo Colon silences O's bats as Mets take series opener

Less than three weeks from his 42nd birthday, right-hander Bartolo Colon showed again tonight that he can still get batters out from both sides of the plate and from both leagues, as well.

Colon gave up just one run over 7 2/3 innings, pitching the New York Mets to a 3-2 win over the Orioles to start the two-game series at Citi Field.

The Orioles fall to 12-12 for the season and to 2-7 in series-opening games. The Orioles have lost seven in a row to the Mets dating back to 2010, and are 9-20 in the all-time series.

Colon pitched out of a jam in the fourth and took a shutout into the eighth before he gave up a homer to Manny Machado. It was Machado's fifth of the year and fourth over his last nine games.

Colon gave up just six hits with no walks and nine strikeouts. He threw 97 pitches, and is now 5-1 with an ERA of 2.90. He has walked one batter all year, with 34 strikeouts over 40 1/3 innings.

The Machado homer was all the Orioles got off Colon tonight. But Chris Davis pulled them within 3-2 with a leadoff homer in the ninth off Mets closer Jeurys Familia. It was No. 6 for Davis. But Familia was able to close it out to record his 11th save in 11 chances.

The O's have been held to 10 runs over the last four games after scoring 59 in the previous nine games.

The Mets took a 3-0 lead in the last of the fourth after they were shut out the last two games of their weekend series against Washington and the first three innings tonight. Lucas Duda led off with a double and scored on a one-out single by Daniel Murphy, who then went to third on Wilmer Flores' double. Kevin Plawecki then smoked a two-run double to left off Bud Norris for a 3-0 lead.

Norris went seven innings, allowing seven hits and three runs with a walk and four strikeouts. He threw 92 pitches, but falls to 1-3 with an ERA of 9.75. Tonight he retired the final 11 batters he faced. He has put together back-to-back quality starts after pitching to an ERA of 17.42 over his first three outings.

For the fourth time in the last five games, the O's got an outing of seven innings or more. That happened just three times in the season's first 19 games.

This was the eighth straight outing of six or more innings by an O's starter and the club's seventh consecutive quality start. The rotation ERA is 2.19 over those seven games.

In the second and final game of this brief series Wednesday night, Ubaldo Jimenez (2-1, 1.59 ERA) pitches against 2014 National League Rookie of the Year Jacob deGrom (2-3, 3.34 ERA).