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Carmona tops Santana, Twins

Apr 25, 2007 - 4:51 AM MINNEAPOLIS (Ticker) -- If it turns out to be his last start for a while, Fausto Carmona made it a good one.

Carmona pitched into the eighth inning and outdueled Johan Santana as the Cleveland Indians posted a 5-3 victory over the Minnesota Twins to sweep a two-game set from their American League Central Division rivals.

"It feels great," Carmona said through an interpreter. "I just tried to concentrate on keeping the ball down, try to get them to swing early in the count and get a lot of ground balls and that's what happened."

With starter Cliff Lee expected to return to the Indians' rotation sometime next week, Carmona is a likely candidate for bullpen duty. Lee, who has won at least 14 games in each of the past three seasons, has been on the disabled list since the start of the season with a strained right abdominal muscle.

But manager Eric Wedge wasn't tipping his hand.

"I'm not going to speculate on that," Wedge said. "In baseball, that's a long ways away."

Carmona (1-1) was sharp, allowing two runs and six hits in 7 2/3 innings. He walked two and struck out two while helping to send Santana to a rare loss in the Metrodome.

In helping hand Santana (3-2) rare back-to-back defeats here, Carmona also snapped a streak of his own. Carmona had lost 11 straight decisions and picked up his first victory since April 15, 2006.

"I knew Santana was pitching but I wasn't thinking about Santana," Carmona said. "I was thinking about being aggressive and go after the hitters and do my job. I know Santana is a great pitcher, but if you think about him its going to be more work."

Santana was making his first home start since his regular-season winning streak was snapped by Tampa Bay on April 13. Santana was 17-0 in his previous 24 home starts - all Twins victories - before he was handed a 4-2 loss.

The reigning American League Cy Young Award winner, Santana saw his career record against the Indians drop to 7-3. He lost consecutive home decisions for the first time since 2005 after allowing four runs and six hits with a walk and seven strikeouts in seven innings.

"I don't really think about that," Santana said. "It's going to happen. You don't know what's going to happen until you go out there and perform. That's the way it is. I'm just trying to do my job and hoping that everybody else will step up in trying to win the game."

"Johan was pretty good," Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said. "He made the one mistake to the big guy, but other than that he threw good."

Travis Hafner, who tied a career high with four hits for the Indians on Monday, belted a home run in the first inning to give Cleveland a 1-0 lead.

Santana then retired eight straight before allowing a one-out single to Victor Martinez in the fourth inning followed by a Ryan Garko double. With Martinez on third, Trot Nixon threw a ground ball to Alexi Casilla at second base, who was playing along with the rest of the infield at normal depth despite just one out. Martinez broke for home, but Casilla hesitated before throwing, allowing Martinez enough time to barely beat the Joe Mauer tag. Jason Michaels followed with a sacrifice fly to give Cleveland a 3-0 advantage.

"Lexi had a chance to throw the guy out if he just comes up and throws, but he hesitated and it turned into a two-run inning instead of one if we give them a run," Gardenhire said. "And if he throws it right away we probably don't give them any there. Not a good night for us."

Justin Morneau hit an RBI single and Torii Hunter followed with a sacrifice fly in the bottom half of the fourth inning, but Casey Blake stretched the Cleveland lead to 4-2 with an RBI double in the seventh.

Santana then hit Hafner in the back with his next pitch but the damage was already done. Shortstop Mike Rouse drove in his first run of the season in the eighth inning with a single, giving the Indians five RBI from five different players.

"That is something that we really work on - not just relying on (Hafner) and (Martinez) to do everything," Garko said. "Other guys got to step up and I thought the inning with guys on second and third and Trot hits the ground ball and Jason the sac fly, that's what we stressed all spring -- just doing the little things to scrap and get runs off of good pitchers."

Joe Borowski allowed a run and two hits in the ninth but picked up his eighth save.