Indians hand ball to Jimenez against A's

Ubaldo Jimenez tries to win his third straight home game game set with the Oakland Athletics at Progressive Field.

While he has pitched to a 5.19 overall earned run average since coming over to the Indians, Jimenez has been terrific at home, going 2-0 with a 0.60 ERA,

Jimenez was again superb on Friday against Kansas City, as he held the Royals to a run and seven hits in seven innings. He also struck out 10 batters and walked one.

This will be his first-ever appearance against the A's.

Cleveland won again on Tuesday, as Carlos Santana and Jack Hannahan hit two- run, sixth-inning homers to push the Indians to a 6-2 win. Kosuke Fukudome added a two-run double for Cleveland, which has won four of five. They remained 5 1/2 games behind first-place Detroit in the AL Central.

Jeanmar Gomez (1-2), who was called up from the minors prior to the game, allowed one unearned run over six innings to record the win. He gave up six hits, walked one and struck out four.

Trevor Cahill (9-13) gave up five runs on seven hits over 5 1/3 innings to suffer his eighth loss in his last nine decisions.

"I thought his stuff was good again," said A's manager Bob Melvin. "There's just a short period where he gets out of whack a little bit."

Coco Crisp and Kurt Suzuki both had an RBI for the A's, losers of four straight.

Getting the call for the Athletics tonight will be righty Rich Harden, who is 4-2 with a 4.55 ERA. Harden couldn't get out of the fifth inning against the New York Yankees on Thursday, as he allowed six runs and 10 hits in 4 1/3 innings of his team's 22-9 loss.

Harden has faced the Indians seven times (six starts) and is 1-0 with a 4.36 ERA.

Cleveland took two of three from the A's earlier in the year.