ANAHEIM -- Joe Saunders fidgeted with the brand new wedding band on his finger, happy to be wearing the ring, but not the loss.

Having tied the knot with his longtime girlfriend, Shanel, earlier this week, Saunders found himself pitching in circles against the Blue Jays. The Angels had runners thrown out at third and at home, but Saunders struggled to find consistency and couldn't escape the sixth inning of a 9-2 loss before 41,631 Saturday at Angel Stadium.

While Saunders (7-2) lost to the Blue Jays for the second time this month, the Angels did maintain their one-game lead in the American League West courtesy of the Texas Rangers, who defeated Seattle, 5-3.

The Angels (75-54) begin an important three-game series in Seattle on Monday, the first of seven games remaining between the top two contenders in the AL West.

This outing is one the Angels will prefer to put behind them, though Saunders hoped that his first game as a married man would have had a better ending. His wife is Canadian and with Toronto in town, it made for the perfect ending to the week.

It didn't work that way. Saunders departed the game after surrendering four consecutive hits in the sixth inning that gave Toronto a 5-2 lead. The Blue Jays put the game out of reach in the ninth inning with four runs. Frank Thomas touched Darren Oliver for a two-run double and Troy Glaus followed with a two-run home run.

Saunders, who gave up three earned runs and eight hits in seven innings of a 4-1 loss at Toronto on Aug. 14, allowed five runs and nine hits in 5 1/3 innings Saturday. He only threw 84 pitches, walked two and struck out two.

The Angels gave Saunders a 2-0 lead after two innings, but he needed all the help he could get to hold off the Blue Jays (65-64). Gary Matthews Jr. robbed Gregg Zaun of a probable run-scoring extra-base hit, striding deep into the left-center-field gap to make a running back-handed catch to end the inning.

Saunders gave up a sacrifice fly to Zaun and a broken-bat RBI single to John McDonald to tie the score at 2 in the fourth.

The sixth inning caught up to him. With his command dwindling, he allowed RBI doubles to Aaron Hill and Zaun and an RBI single to McDonald that gave Toronto a 5-2 lead and ended Saunders' night.

"I thought I made some good pitches and some bad pitches in that inning," Saunders said. "They made some good swings on some great pitches."

Manager Mike Scioscia said Saunders battled without his best stuff.

"I thought the ball was up in the zone as the game went on," Scioscia said. "I don't know if he had his best stuff, but he pitched well enough to keep us in the game. But in the sixth the ball was getting up and up as counts went up. [The Blue Jays] didn't miss the ball when he got it up in a zone where they could hit it."

With the score tied in the fourth inning, Howie Kendrick was thrown out at third base to end the inning, partly, Scioscia said, because Izturis didn't run hard through third base. That cost Kendrick a step, enough time for center fielder Vernon Wells to throw out Kendrick.

"The breakdown wasn't a result of aggressive baserunning," Scioscia said. "You look at the replays very closely and the last three or four steps looked like [Izturis] pulled up a bit and that cost [Kendrick]. That's a cardinal sin of baserunning. Any time there's a backside play you know you want to keep running through the bag and for some reason, [Izturis] didn't."

The Angels, who got their runs on Orlando Cabrera's RBI single in the first and Jeff Mathis' sacrifice fly in the second, also had an average runner in Kendry Morales thrown out at the plate to end the second.

The Angels will try to earn a split of the series on Sunday when former Blue Jay Kelvim Escobar tries to become the fourth 15-game winner in the AL. They will try to forget a night that, for Saunders and the Angels, just didn't have a good ring to it.

John Klima is a contributor to MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.