Dylan Bundy pitches a gem in the Orioles' 7-2 win

The Orioles offense had a good night. But right-hander Dylan Bundy had a better one. It added up to a lopsided win over a red-hot team, as the Orioles beat the Royals 7-2 at Camden Yards.

Bundy went a career-high eight innings, allowing three hits and one unearned run in the win. He walked one and fanned five, throwing 93 pitches, 64 for strikes. Bundy is now 10-8 with an ERA of 4.24. At a time when the club is watching his season-innings limit closely, Brad Brach pitched the ninth and allowed one run to complete the win.

Before tonight, Bundy had an ERA of 7.85 his past seven starts, allowing five runs or more five times. But he was rolling tonight at 39 pitches through three and 72 through six. He retired the last 13 batters he faced and got 17 of the last 18. O's starting pitchers have an ERA of 0.94 the last four games.

Meanwhile, right-hander Ian Kennedy had not faced the Orioles since 2008. After tonight, he might want to wait another nine years.

Coming off a start where he allowed one run to the Tigers, Kennedy was 4-0 with a 3.26 ERA over his past eight starts. But the Orioles got to him tonight to take the first two games of this series.

Over four innings and one batter, the former Yankee allowed eight hits and four runs, throwing 92 pitches. He took the loss, his first since June 5 against Houston. He began the night third in the American League with a .212 batting average against. The Orioles went 8-for-19 (.421) against him.

The Orioles have won four in a row and 10 of their last 15 games to get to 52-54 for the season. They are 32-21 at Camden Yards.

The O's took a 2-0 lead in the first with four straight one-out hits. Manny Machado doubled. At that point, he had six hits his last nine at-bats with five doubles. He scored on Jonathan Schoop's single to center, which was his 78th RBI. Schoop went to third on a Chris Davis single and came in on Trey Mancini's RBI double.

After the Royals got an unearned run in the third, due in part to Welington Castillo's throwing error, the Orioles pulled away with one in the fourth and three runs in the fifth.

Seth Smith was hit on the right elbow by a pitch in the fourth, advanced two bases on groundouts and scored on an Adam Jones single for a 3-1 edge.

Three runs an inning later gave the Orioles a nice margin of 6-1. Smith drilled a two-run double to left-center and scored on Castillo's single to center. They added a seventh run in the seventh on Smith's run-scoring single to give him a three-RBI night.

Through the fifth inning, the Orioles had six runs on 12 hits, going 12-for-26 (.462) at-bat with four doubles. The O's went 5-for-9 with runners in scoring position over the first five frames.

A team that contends that it is still in contention in the AL playoff race, the Orioles have posted back-to-back impressive wins over a hot club. Kansas City began this series with 10 wins its previous 11 games and with a mark of 14-8 against AL East teams.

They can sweep this series on Wednesday when Jeremy Hellickson (6-5, 4.73 ERA with Philadelphia) makes his Orioles debut and pitches against lefty Jason Vargas (13-4, 3.00 ERA).