Choo has seven RBIs as Tribe busts out

CLEVELAND (AP) — Shin-Soo Choo gave his high school baseball coach a fitting tribute.

Choo learned before batting practice that his coach had died of cancer. Then he homered twice and drove in a career-high seven runs in a 15-3 victory over the Oakland Athletics on Friday night that snapped Cleveland’s five-game losing streak.

“I’ll never forget this game,” said Choo, who helped South Korea to the championship game of the World Baseball Classic in March.

“If I was told before the game I would do this, I wouldn’t believe it,” he added. “He was almost a like a second dad.”

Choo had an RBI single, two-run double, three-run homer and capped his night with a solo shot, his 12th. It was Choo’s second career multi-homer game and the most RBIs by a Cleveland player since Grady Sizemore drove in seven Aug. 21 against Kansas City.

Choo arrived early at Progressive Field to work with hitting coach Derek Shelton. He had watched three hours of video on the off-day Thursday and wanted to make some adjustments at the plate — even though he had raised his average to .292 by hitting .309 over his previous 48 games.

“Why change?” Choo responded to a question. “Because I want to get better.”

Cleveland, with the worst record in the AL at 32-49, could use it. The Indians won for only the third time in 16 games.

Asdrubal Cabrera had three RBIs in the Indians’ biggest output since a 22-4 win at Yankee Stadium on April 18. They scored only 13 runs and batted .195 during their five-game losing skid.

David Huff (4-3) gave up five doubles, but only three runs over six innings to improve to 4-1 in his last six starts.

Oakland, which had given up only 10 runs over its previous four games, opened a nine-game trip by losing for the seventh time in nine games.

“Cleveland hasn’t been swinging the bats that great lately,” Oakland manager Bob Geren said. “We’ve been throwing the ball pretty well. It happens. It’s one game.”

Rookie Trevor Cahill (5-7) was wild and was hurt by some shaky fielding. The right-hander gave up five earned runs over 32‚Ñ3 innings, walking four.