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Cust powers Athletics past Indians

Jun 28, 2007 - 4:03 AM CLEVELAND (Ticker) -- Jack Cust continued his dominance over the Cleveland Indians and helped wake the Oakland Athletics bats in the process.

Cust homered and had a career-high five RBI as the Athletics snapped a five-game losing streak with an 13-7 victory over the Indians on Wednesday.

Cust, who is batting .391 (9-of-23) with five homers and 15 RBI in six games against Cleveland this season, blasted a three-run homer off Indians starter Fausto Carmona (8-4) to stake the Athletics to an early 3-0 lead in the first inning.

"It's nothing different," said Cust. "I just happen to be playing (Cleveland) when I am seeing the ball well. When we first played them, I was hitting the ball good and I am hitting the ball well right now."

"(Cust) continues to impress," Athletics manager Bob Geren said. "He's doing a terrific job for us. He was a great story early on in the season and a lot of people wrote about him. Now you are getting past the story, but he is still a great hitter."

Oakland, which had scored just 10 runs during the five-game losing streak, added six more runs in the second to open up a 9-0 advantage.

"It was great for the bats to come out early and score some runs," Cust said. "Obviously we needed the win."

After Marco Scutaro led off with a single, Kurt Suzuki blasted his second home run of the season. Travis Buck followed with a double, and Shannon Stewart had an infield single before Nick Swisher ended Carmona's night with an RBI double to center.

Jason Stanford entered but failed to slow down Oakland's offense. Cust's sacrifice fly made the score 6-0, and Chavez followed with a double to left center before Mark Ellis and Dan Johnson hit back-to-back RBI singles to cap the rally.

"It was an outstanding offensive performance, probably our best all season," Geren said.

Lenny DiNardo (3-5), who threw a season-high 106 pitches, was the beneficiary of Oakland's offensive outburst as he allowed two runs and five hits with three walks and three strikeouts in five innings to pick up his second win since being moved to the rotation on May 29.

"That kind of run support was a confidence booster for me," DiNardo said. "After we took the lead, I just wanted to be aggressive and pound the strike zone. A lot of times you see a pitcher get lax with a big lead, I just kept trying to pitch like the score was 0-0."

Oakland needed all the offense it could get as Cleveland scored five runs off the Athletics beleaguered bullpen.

After a 29-minute rain delay, Casey Blake and Travis Hafner each hit solo homers off Athletics reliever Dallas Braden to cut the deficit to 11-4.

But Santiago Casilla pitched a scoreless eighth and ninth to preserve the victory.

Carmona suffered his worst outing of the season and the shortest start of his career. Carmona allowed seven hits and a season-high eight runs in just one frame. The righthander saw his ERA jump from 3.21 to 3.92.

"I was up in the strike zone," Carmona said through a translator. "My ball wasn't sinking as much as it usually does. When it was sinking, it was out of the strike zone, so I tried to go with my other pitches."

It was the second straight loss for Carmona, who started the season 7-1 but has lost three of his last four starts with a 6.86 ERA during that span.