Matt Angle gets a shaving cream pie to the face after he hits his first career home run
Then Matt Angle came up and dropped a suicide squeeze bunt along the first-base line to plate Hudson for a 6-5 lead that stood up for a 6-5 win. The game began as a pitching matchup between one right-hander with 24 wins and one with 17 losses in Jeremy Guthrie. Verlander entered this outing against the Orioles tonight with a record of 24-5 and ERA of 2.29. He was 6-0 in eight career starts against the Orioles and 12-0 over his past 12 starts this year. Plus, he was looking to become the majors' first 25-game winner since Oakland's Bob Welch won 27 games in 1990. While the Orioles got five runs off Verlander in seven innings, Detroit came back to tie the game 5-5 to take him off the hook for his first loss since July 15. Angle, who had been homerless in 69 big league at-bats, led off the game with a homer to right. Angle hit four homers in 424 at-bats this year at Triple-A Norfolk. The Orioles added three runs off Verlander in the second on a J.J. Hardy two-run single and a Nick Markakis RBI single. Mark Reynolds hit a solo homer in the top of the third for a surprising 5-0 early edge on Verlander. That was his 37th on the year and his fifth homer in his last seven games. Reynolds' 37 homers ties him for ninth most in a single season in Orioles history with Boog Powell (37 in 1969) and Albert Belle (37 in 1999). Detroit battled back, though, and eventually tied the game on a Jhonny Peralta single in the eighth off Pedro Strop. Thanks to the ninth-inning run, Strop got the win and Kevin Gregg came on to record a save. That was his 22nd on the year. The Orioles won for the ninth time in the last 12 games and they are 20-14 since Aug. 22 and 13-11 in September. The Orioles are 67-91 on the year with four games remaining and that is one more win than last year. The Tigers were 25-8 in Verlander's starts this year and he had allowed one earned run or less 17 times and recorded a quality start 28 times, but did not add to either total tonight.