Guerrero enjoys a grand start

One is a shy, quiet country boy from the mountains who likes blue jeans and would think nothing of going off into the hills by himself for days at a time.

The other, from a tiny fishing village, is a gregarious homebody whose mother still cooks for him and who, even now, has to shoo chickens and goats off his hometown baseball field to get in an off-season workout.

On the surface, Bartolo Colon and Vladimir Guerrero would seem to have little more in common than a shared language and the same color passport. Then comes every fifth day when Colon takes his turn on the mound for the Angels and the two Dominican teammates become a better pair than rock and roll.

Take Tuesday, for example, when Colon survived five shaky innings thanks in large part to Guerrero’s massive first-inning grand slam, which started the Angels to a 7-5 win over the hapless Kansas City Royals. It was the fourth win in a row and 10th in 12 games for the Angels, who started their streak a day after Colon came off the disabled list.

And Guerrero has slugged a homer in the first inning of each of Colon’s three wins during that span, scoring four runs and driving in eight.

“Going back to 2004, since we’ve been together, whenever I pitch he always hits a home run,” Colon said. “Sometimes I joke with him that I’m going to pitch every night so that he can hit a home run.”

Added Guerrero with a laugh: “They come when they come.”

This time, however, Guerrero had a huge supporting cast, with Gary Matthews Jr. going four for five and scoring three times, Reggie Willits collecting a career-high three hits and Orlando Cabrera and Erick Aybar contributing two hits apiece to a 13-hit attack that gave the Angels an American League-best 252 hits.

“We need to be more than Vlad. And we are,” said Manager Mike Scioscia, who tied Bill Rigney’s franchise record for wins by a manager with his 625th. “We’re getting production throughout the lineup. And we have to. We just can’t stop at Vlad.”

The Angels gave Colon (3-0) a big cushion before he had even left the dugout, loading the bases against Zack Greinke (1-3) on seven pitches, then watching Guerrero unload them with a 435-foot shot over the fountains in left-center-field for his fifth career grand slam.

“That ball was crushed,” Scioscia said. “Every night he just seems to do something.”

It was the 12th time in 27 games the Angels have scored in the first inning and they’ve lost only one of those contests.

A triple by Matthews and a Cabrera double made it 5-0 in the second inning before the Royals, who have dropped three games in a row and lead the majors with 19 losses, rallied against Colon, scoring four times in a third inning highlighted by Mark Teahen’s three-run homer.

“It was a bad outing for me, but thank God we won,” said Colon, who lasted only five innings. “I have to give credit to them. They made me pay whenever I made a bad pitch.”

The teams exchanged single runs in the fourth inning, then settled into a pitcher’s duel before consecutive hits by Matthews and Willits got the Angels their final run in the eighth.

Francisco Rodriguez then closed the game out with a perfect ninth inning, striking out two, for his fourth save in as many days and a league-best 10th.

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kevin.baxter@latimes.com