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Final Score: Kansas City 5 - Oakland 2

Oakland, CA (Sports Network) - John Buck belted a three-run home run and Gil Meche tossed seven solid innings as the Kansas City Royals topped the reeling Oakland Athletics, 5-2, in the second of a three-game series at McAfee Coliseum.

Meche (9-9) allowed two runs on five hits, striking out eight and walking two for the Royals, winners of three straight. Joakim Soria tossed a scoreless ninth for his 29th save, setting a single-season record for Mexican-born pitchers.

"My fastball had a lot of life and I made a lot of good pitches," Meche said. "I threw some balls inside tonight and I had a good change-up."

Mike Aviles homered, tripled and scored two runs, while Alex Gordon doubled and scored a run.

Mark Ellis went 2-for-4, knocked in a run and scored a run for the A's, who have lost 11 of 13 overall. Greg Smith (5-10) was the hard-luck loser after he allowed all five runs on just four hits in seven innings, striking out five and walking two.

"It's not fun scoring two runs, but it can be frustrating," Ellis said. "But, you have to work and keep working and keep trying to have good at-bats as a team and we've got to make the pitchers work a little bit more."

Aviles' fourth inning triple was Kansas City's first hit of the game until the sixth inning when, with two outs, Aviles broke a 1-1 tie by drilling a 2-1 cutter into the seats in left.

Buck's blast put the game out of reach in the seventh. With runners at the corners and two outs, Smith left an 0-1 fastball over the middle of the plate and Buck turned on it, launching a shot deep over the wall in left-center.

"It was an 0-1 pitch and just a fastball on the inner third," Smith said. "It wasn't a good pitch at all, especially with the lefty on deck. I just didn't pitch to the situation and it came back to hurt me, but it is frustrating because I think I threw well, but then the results weren't there."

Oakland pulled a run back in the home half, as Ellis doubled with one out, moved to third on Jack Hannahan's single and scored when Bobby Crosby grounded out.

But, Ron Mahay worked a perfect eighth for the Royals, and Soria worked around a two-out single by Hannahan in the ninth to pick up the save.

The starters dueled early, but the teams traded runs in the fourth inning. Aviles led off the top half with a triple, then trotted home on Mark Grudzielanek's sacrifice fly. The A's countered with a brief, two-out rally as Jack Cust doubled and Ellis singled up the middle to bring him home.