Streak ends, but Tribe still wins

Oakland managed to score a run, but the Indians still posted a 4-2 victory.

CLEVELAND (AP) — It wasn’t even a bad pitch that ended the Cleveland Indians’ scoreless streak.

An unearned run against Aaron Laffey on his own throwing error halted the starting rotation’s run of 441‚Ñ3 consecutive shutout innings, but didn’t interrupt their string of dominant outings.

Laffey pitched the Indians to a 4-2 victory over the Oakland Athletics Thursday, completing a three-game sweep and giving the surging Indians eight victories in 10 games.

“When you talk about five guys — to do it day in and day out it’s impressive,” Laffey said. “It’s just been an incredible week of starting pitching for us.”

Cleveland completed a 6-1 homestand in which it allowed runs in just four of 64 innings. The starters went 6-0 with a 0.16 ERA and haven’t allowed an earned run in 501‚Ñ3 innings.

In the rotation because of an injury to Jake Westbrook, Laffey (2-2) allowed just the unearned run and five hits in seven innings, struck out six and walked one. He lowered his ERA to 1.35 and has gone seven innings in each of his last three starts without giving up an earned run.

Cleveland’s scoreless streak, which began last Friday, ended in the second when Laffey charged Rob Bowen’s weak grounder and threw it into right field, allowing Bobby Crosby to score from second.

“When it’s an error like, that it’s kind of disappointing, especially to break a streak like that,” Laffey said. “I had a lot more time than I thought I did. I just kind of rushed and let go of the ball too early. It went flying; I almost threw it to second base.”

The streak was the longest by Cleveland’s starters since Bob Lemon, Gene Bearden, Sam Zoldak and Satchel Paige strung together 47 scoreless innings in August 1948 — all complete game shutouts. It was the longest by a major league team in one season since a 54-inning streak by Baltimore’s starters from Sept. 1-7, 1974, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

Jhonny Peralta homered for the Indians, who Wednesday moved into the AL Central lead for the first time since the opening week of the season.

Oakland has lost five of six after winning four straight.

“We’ve run into some pitching,” A’s manager Bob Geren said. “We’ve played good defense and pitched very well. We just haven’t scored any runs.”