Manny Machado came up huge on night one of the road trip

ANAHEIM, Calif. - Great players make great plays. Given two chances in the seventh inning Monday night to make such plays, Orioles third baseman Manny Machado went 2-for-2.

In a 2-2 tie he batted with the bases loaded and two outs and hit a grand slam 423-feet to left field. That was in the top of the inning. In the bottom of the seventh, he made an excellent backhand stop of a hot-smash grounder and turned that into an inning-ending double play.

The Orioles beat the Los Angeles Angels 6-2 to win for the eighth time in their last 10 games and move back to the .500 mark at 56-56. It was a strong start to a 10-game road trip and moved the Orioles to within 1 1/2 games out for the second AL wild card spot.

Machado had an average in the low .200s most of this year. But not anymore.

"You obviously learn, in this game you always learn and continue to learn," Machado said of his earlier struggles. "This has obviously been a learning season for me and I'm going to take everything positively and just learn from this. Learn from how I struggled and how I continue to struggle. This isn't going to be the only time I struggle, but all great players struggle and you have to learn how to deal with it and overcome it."

He is doing that in recent weeks. Machado drove in five runs Sunday and he is 5-for-9 with two homers and nine RBIs his last two games. In 26 games since early July, he is batting .381 (40-for-105) with five homers and 24 RBIs. His average his risen from .215 to .256.

He said he just worked hard with hitting coach Scott Coolbaugh to stay with his routine and he knew some better days were coming for his bat. They are here now.

"Just staying consistent will always give you a good outcome," Machado said. "Staying consistent with our routine every day. Things starting turning out how I want, hits start falling. I'm getting some little cheap hits instead of hard line-outs I've gotten in the past. Just trying to continue my routine and hopefully things turn around," he said.

Machado recently went through a 22-game homerless stretch. But now he has hit two in two games and three in the last four.

"He's not letting things snowball," manager Buck Showalter said. "He might have a couple of at-bats with nothing to show for it, but he's still dangerous the next time up. You just see him between innings. There's a lot more confidence. The support system is a good one for all our guys because we're all going to go through those (struggling) periods. He knows the team depends on him to do certain things."

Machado hit his first grand slam of the year and the fifth of his career. He has hit four the last two years to tie for the MLB lead.

On the night that the Angels' Mike Trout recorded his 1,000th career hit on his 26th birthday, Machado provided another reminder that there is a 25-year-old playing for Baltimore that can be a pretty special player too.

Click here for a read of last night's game story and some quotes from the win.

A few more notes on the victory:

* Dylan Bundy went seven innings allowing two runs to get the win and is 11-8 with a 4.15 ERA. He leads the Orioles with 15 quality starts. Bundy fanned a career-high 10 without a walk. He pitched well against a hot-hitting team. The Angels were averaging 5.7 runs per game the previous 16 games.

* Bundy's outing was the latest strong one by an O's starting pitcher. Over the past 10 games, O's starters have allowed two earned runs or less nine times. The rotation ERA is 2.02 in that span.

* Tim Beckham has just one hit in each of the last two games, but he is batting .536 (15-for-28) in seven games as an Oriole. He has hit safely in each game, with five multi-hit games.

* The Orioles were a season-high seven games under .500 on July 16 at 42-49. Since then they have gone 14-7 to get to 56-56 and at the .500 mark for the first time since June 29.

* The Orioles, who went 4-2 against the Angels last year, are 9-5 against them over the past 14 meetings between the clubs.