Wrapping up the Orioles' 7-5 loss to the Dodgers

LOS ANGELES - Tonight at Dodger Stadium, a red-hot team met one struggling for wins. The struggling group took the early lead, but in the end, the hot team charged back to win.

The Los Angeles Dodgers won for the 15th time in 20 games and ran their home win streak to 10, beating the Orioles 7-5 in front of 47,378.

The Orioles fall to 47-35 and have lost a season-high five in a row. Their AL East division lead, which was 5 1/2 games last Wednesday, is down to two games tonight.

The pitching and offense both had issues tonight. The Orioles got another short outing from a starting pitcher. At the same time, after the offense scored five early runs, O's batters went just 2-for-19 the rest of the game.

As for the rotation, O's starters have combined to pitch just 11 1/3 innings the last three games, allowing 18 runs. On a 2-5 road trip, the rotation ERA is 7.91.

The O's are not getting many shutdown innings these days and short starts are clearly taxing the bullpen.

"One thing is how long the innings are," manager Buck Showalter said. "You'd like to get on and off the field, too. They put a lot of good at-bats together, but we are really having to pitch people in situations that their best skills are not really suited for that situation. But it is what it is.

"They came right back and scored. We've done that to other teams. Kept hoping Yovani (Gallardo) would find his step there a little bit. He had some good sequences. Just couldn't string it together. I was surprised. I expected him to be a little bit crisper tonight."

The go-ahead run that broke a 5-5 tie in the seventh was balked into scoring position by Odrisamer Despaigne. That was a call the Orioles did not agree with.

"The balk call obviously wasn't a balk," Showalter said. "I don't know where that came from. It kind of came out of the air. Kind of over-officiating something that's not there. That's a big call. Better be 100 percent sure before you make that. But that didn't beat us."

After the Orioles led 3-0 tonight, Gallardo allowed back-to-back solo homers in the second to Yaisel Puig and Yasmani Grandal that made it 3-2. He went four innings allowing four runs and has an ERA of 6.10.

"You know, we're going to turn it around," Gallardo said. "We have to rely on each other for one of us to step up and go deep in the ballgame to get that victory. It hasn't been a good five days for us, just the staff in general. We just have to stay positive and keep going forward.

"We weren't able to get it done today but show up tomorrow with (Chris) Tillman on the mound. He's been throwing the ball great. Didn't happen today, we have to prepare for tomorrow."

The Orioles have now played four regular-season games at Dodger Stadium, going 0-4. They are 16-22 on the road this season.

Catcher Matt Wieters was asked about the short starts. It's a stretch now where O's starters have worked five or fewer innings seven times in the last nine game and 14 times in 22 games.

"It's combination of everything," Wieters said. "There's never just one thing you can put your finger on. We had a couple plays we could have made tonight. We also had a couple at-bats that we could have better at bats and I'm sure the pitchers will say there were a couple of pitches they wish they would have made better as well as some pitches I could have called better. Anytime you lose, it's a combination of things. There are team wins and team losses here. That's kind of how we've built ourself and what we're going to stick with."