Miguel Gonzalez on today's outing against the Phillies

CLEARWATER, Fla. - After going two and three innings over his first two spring starts, Orioles right-hander Miguel Gonzalez stretched out to four innings today against the Phillies at Bright House Field.

He retired the first nine Phillies in order on 34 pitches, before allowing two runs in his fourth inning.

"Good. Better than last time," Gonzalez said. "I was staying tall over the rubber. Really worked on it in my side last time. It paid off, felt really good."

With a 14-pitch first inning, a 12-pitch second and eight-pitch third, Gonzalez was rolling early on today. He threw first-pitch strikes to eight of the first nine batters he faced and said that was important.

"Yeah, definitely with this offense they have and the wind blowing out," he said. "It was important for me to pound strikes the first couple of innings."

Over his four innings, he gave up four hits and two runs with no walks and four strikeouts, throwing 53 pitches, 37 for strikes. In three games, he has allowed four runs and eight hits over nine innings.

Is he working on any specific pitches right now?

"My split-finger fastball," he said. "I think I need to work on it a little more. It will come. Little by little, it's getting better and just stay down and finish through. That is really important."

Gonzalez said he's happy with where his game is at for this point of spring training.

"Dave (Wallace) told us since the beginning, they are going to take it slow and work on our stuff," Gonzalez said. "Go out and try to go up at least four times today and I went up the fifth time and threw 10 more pitches in the bullpen. Can build with this. Pretty happy with what happened today."

And he was happy to see the Orioles' offense break out. When he exited the game, he had an 11-2 lead.

"Really impressive watching those guys hit today," Gonzalez said. "They were really in the zone. It was fun. Takes time for them to get the timing down. They faced a really good pitcher today and obviously it wasn't his day today, but those are the type of guys we have in our clubhouse."