ANAHEIM, Calif. _ With one swing, Manny Machado opened the Baltimore Orioles' West Coast road trip with a bang.
The Orioles third baseman broke open a tied game Monday night with one swing of his suddenly sizzling bat, hitting his fifth career grand slam in the seventh inning to send the Orioles to a 6-2 win over the Los Angeles Angels in the first game of the club's 10-day, 10-game road trip through Anaheim, Oakland and Seattle.
Machado, who was hitless in his first three at bats, lined a 1-0 slider from Angels starter JC Ramirez over the two-tier bullpens in left field of Angel Stadium for his second homer in as many games and his third homer in his past four games.
Machado now has nine RBIs in his past two games, and has 12 RBIs over his past five games, which equaled his total for the entire month of May.
The Orioles loaded the bases for Machado after back-to-back one-out singles by Seth Smith and Welington Castillo and Adam Jones' getting hit by a pitch.
With the win, the Orioles (56-56) reached the .500 mark for the first time since June 29 and are now just 1 { games back of the second American League wild-card spot.
They took a 2-1 lead into the middle innings of their series opener by manufacturing runs.
Right fielder Joey Rickard's RBI bloop-single followed by a sacrifice fly by Jones plated two runs in the inning off Ramirez.
Tim Beckham started the inning with a leadoff single, then moved to second on an errant pickoff throw. Smith drew a six-pitch walk, and Castillo's fly out to right field was deep enough to move both runners into scoring position.
Rickard, who set a new career high with four hits Sunday, then looped a ball into shallow center field that shortstop Andrelton Simmons couldn't come up with, allowing Beckham to score easily from third. Jones then flied out to deep center field to plate Smith.
Mike Trout tied the game in the sixth with a solo homer to left, his 23rd of the season, off Orioles right-hander Dylan Bundy.
Bundy records career-high 10 strikeouts: Bundy continued to perform well when given extra rest, holding the Angels to two runs over seven innings while pitching on six days rest.
Bundy allowed just five hits _ the only two extra-base hits yielded to Trout _ and recorded a career-high 10 strikeouts while walking none.
The 24-year-old's maturation has been highlighted by mixing his pitches in favor of high strikeout totals, but on Monday night, he had his best strikeout effort of his young career against a free-swinging Angels lineup. Five of Bundy's last nine outs came by strikeout.
Bundy was especially effective throwing his slider down in the zone as a swing-and-miss pitch, getting eight swinging strikes with the pitch. Bundy recorded six strikeouts with his slider, five of them swinging.
Since the All-Star break, Bundy has allowed two runs or fewer in three of his four starts, each of those performances coming on extended rest.
In six starts pitching on six or more days rest, Bundy has a 2.53 ERA, compared to a 4.66 ERA while pitching on four or five days rest.
Bundy was finding his groove until Trout opened the bottom of the fourth inning with a double down the left-field line for his 1,000th career hit.
With that hit, Trout _ who celebrated his 26th birthday on Monday _ became the 10th player in American League history to amass 1,000 hits before his age-26 season, joining a club that includes Ty Cobb, Al Kaline, Alex Rodriguez, Robin Yount, Jimmie Foxx, Buddy Lewis, Mickey Mantle, Ken Griffey Jr. and Stuffy McInnis.
Two batters later, Trout plated the first run of the night on Cole Kalhoun's sacrifice fly to center field.
