BALTIMORE (Ticker) -- Brian Anderson made a triumphant return to the Cleveland Indians.
The lefthander combined with Danys Baez on a four-hitter and Matt Lawton belted a three-run homer as the Indians blanked the Baltimore Orioles, 3-0, in the rubber game of a three-game series.
Anderson (1-0), who pitched for Cleveland in 1996-97, allowed four hits in eight innings with a walk and two strikeouts. Baez sruck out two in a perfect ninth for his second save in as many nights.
"I'll take that one out of the gate," Anderson said. "It was pretty emotional for me out there. Rick (Helling) is my best friend. We played on the '92 Olympic team together and have been friends ever since."
"He's (Anderson) been making steady progress all spring and it came together tonight," Indians manager Eric Wedge added. "He changed his speeds and got ahead of the hitters."
Helling (0-1), making his first start for the Orioles, faced the minimum number of hitters through the first four innings. Milton Bradley led off the fourth with a single but was picked off.
The Indians finally broke through in the sixth as Bradley walked and Omar Vizquel reached on an infield single. Lawton drilled the first pitch over the right field fence to give Anderson all the support he needed.
"I pitched well but not well enough," Helling said. "I made a mistake and that was the difference. It is a pitch you live or die with. Am I pleased? I got outpitched. I am disappointed that we lost. It's never good enough when you lose."
"One pitch," Orioles catcher Brook Fordyce said. "It was frustrating, as a catcher and offensive player, not to give these guys (Omar Daal Wednesday and Helling on Thursday) runs."
It was the first hit of the season for Lawton, who had been 0-for-8.
"I was just trying to be aggressive up there," Lawton said. "We wasn't giving me anything to hit at all and I just told myself to be ready for one. He left a fastball up and I jumped on it."
Anderson threw 99 pitches and got 12 outs on the ground, including a pair of double plays.
"We had good pitching all three games, I think," Anderson said. "If this is what the season is going to be like, we should be able to win a lot of ballgames."
Each team had only four hits in a contest that lasted just two hours, 14 minutes.
Cleveland's Ellis Burks led off the top of the ninth with a triple but was left stranded at third.
The Orioles got only one runner as far as third. Jay Gibbons opened the second with a double and moved up on a groundout. But third baseman Casey Blake preserved the shutout with a diving stop on Deivi Cruz's hard grounder.
Baltimore has just nine hits in its last two contests. The Orioles managed only five in Wednesday's 4-2 loss to the Indians.
"As the game went on we just got more and more antsy and started swinging at more and more bad pitches," Orioles manager Mike Hargrove said. "The longer the game went on the less patient we got."
Through three games, the Orioles are batting just .209 (24-of-115) as a team. Jeff Conine is hitting .143, Jerry Hairston .154 and Gary Matthews Jr. .200.
