AMERICAN LEAGUE Mueller: from goat to good guy

Mooney graduate Mark Malaska pitched two-thirds of an inning for Boston.
CLEVELAND (AP) -- Bill Mueller had no reason to sit at his locker and brood Wednesday night.
Mueller hit a tie-breaking three-run homer, David Ortiz homered twice, and the Boston Red Sox broke a five-game losing streak with a 9-5 win over the Cleveland Indians.
"Tonight, I was very fortunate that the ball I hit carried and gave us a cushion," said Mueller, who blamed himself for a 7-6 loss the previous night when he made two crucial throwing errors.
Cardinal Mooney High graduate Mark Malaska pitched two-thirds of an inning for Boston. He allowed one hit and walked a batter in relief of starter Byung-Hyun Kim.
"This club knows it is going to perform," Mueller said. "Hopefully, this is the start of what we're capable of doing."
The winner
Bronson Arroyo (1-1) gave up one hit and struck out three over two scoreless innings of relief for the win -- snapping Cleveland's four-game winning streak.
Mueller snapped a 5-5 tie with his homer off reliever David Riske in the sixth inning.
It was just his fourth hit in 32 at-bats with runners in scoring position this season. The defending AL batting champion was dropped from second to eighth in the order Tuesday night by manager Terry Francona, and has gone 4-for-7 since to move his average up to .257.
"If he had been hitting second, he'd probably have gotten hits, too," Francona said. "I just did it because I thought it would relax him a little."
Ortiz connected twice and drove in four runs against Jeff D'Amico (1-2) to give the Red Sox a rare early lead.
"I thought both of them were fairly decent pitches," D'Amico said. "That's the way it is going for me right now."
Ortiz, just 3-for-21 (.143) in his previous five games, hit a high drive just inside the right-field foul pole in the first inning for a 1-0 lead.
The Red Sox got five hits in a four-run third highlighted by Ortiz's seventh homer, a three-run shot with two outs. Kevin Millar added an RBI single later in the inning for a 5-3 lead.
When Cleveland only scored once in the bottom half, it meant the Red Sox led after a complete inning for the first time in 40 innings -- since the seventh inning of the first game of a doubleheader Saturday in Texas.
Sox starter shaky
But Cleveland scored once in the third when Red Sox starter Byung-Hyun Kim hit a batter, gave up one single, and also made one of three Boston errors in the inning.
Kim allowed four earned runs and six hits over 3 1/3 innings.
Cleveland took a 2-1 lead in the first on Omar Vizquel's second homer, a triple by Jody Gerut and sacrifice fly by Victor Martinez.
Two more hits and a sacrifice fly by Matt Lawton made it 3-1 in the Indians' second.
Lawton doubled to finish Kim, and scored on Vizquel's single off Malaska to tie it at 5 in the fourth.