The Oakland Athletics evened up their three game series with the Cleveland Indians Wednesday night thanks to David DeJesus’ first career multi-homer game and another solid outing from Trevor Cahill. The win moved the A’s back over the .500 mark as they are now 16-15. The two teams will square off in a get-away day rubber match at 12:35pm on Thursday.
David DeJesus was the story of the game as he was almost all of the A’s offense. Through 7 2/3 innings, DeJesus’ two home runs were the only base runners of any sort. The A’s scratched across an insurance run in the eighth after Mark Ellis reached on an error, advanced to third on a Cliff Pennington single, and scored on a Coco Crisp single.
It was all the A’s pitchers needed in spite of an occasionally up and down performance by Trevor Cahill. Cahill lasted seven innings and escaped danger a couple times as he gave up five hits and three walks. He had throw 105 pitches through six innings, but a taxed bullpen forced Geren to let him go another inning. Cahill finished the seventh and turned it over to David Purcey, Brad Ziegler and Grant Balfour. It got interesting in the eighth, but the bullpen did enough to nail it down. Cahill improved to 5-0 with a 1.79 ERA as he continues to lead the A’s pitching staff.
The two teams play their rubber match in a lunch-time affair on Thursday. Brett Anderson faces Jeanmar Gomez at 12:35pm as the A’s look to move to two games over .500 for the first time this season.