Cleveland, OH (Sports Network) – Matt LaPorta’s solo homer in the sixth inning provided the game-deciding run, as the Indians held on to down the Blue Jays, 5-4, in the second installment of a four-game series.
Fausto Carmona (7-6) scattered six hits and three walks, allowing four runs — three earned — in 6 1/3 innings to squeak out a win. The sinkerballer recorded 13 of his outs on the ground to offset only two strikeouts.
Kerry Wood closed it out in the ninth for his third save in as many days.
Travis Hafner doubled twice and drove in a run for Cleveland, which has won three straight on the heels of a 1-11 stretch.
Brandon Morrow (5-6) yielded five runs — three earned — on seven hits and two walks to take the loss. The hard-throwing righty ended with eight strikeouts a six-inning start.
Adam Lind drove in a pair of runs for Toronto, which has dropped seven of nine overall.
Carmona was pulled with one out and two on in the seventh holding a 5-2 lead. Tony Sipp recorded an out before a wild pitch allowed Lyle Overbay to score. Joe Smith was then called in from the bullpen with runners on the corners and got Jose Bautista to hit a seemingly harmless fly ball to right.
Shin-Soo Choo, though, broke in late on the ball and had it glance off the heel of his glove, bringing in Jose Molina for a 5-4 game.
Smith was able to get Vernon Wells to ground out to end the inning, and Rafael Perez threw a 1-2-3 eighth in front of Wood, who plunked Molina on an 0-2 pitch to start the ninth.
Wood settled down and got pinch-hitter John Buck to go down swinging and Fred Lewis to ground into a game-ending double play to seal his eighth save.
Cleveland used a pair of two-out rallies to go up 3-0 in the first two frames.
After Carlos Santana singled and Hafner doubled with two away in the first, Jhonny Peralta appeared to bounce into an inning-ending groundout to third. However, Overbay couldn’t handle John McDonald’s low throw, the ball wound up in the stands and both runners scored.
In the second, Choo followed Trevor Crowe’s ground-rule double with a run- scoring single to right.
The hosts pushed across another two-out run in the fifth, when Santana worked a walk and raced around on Hafner’s double to center.
The Jays cut their deficit in half in the sixth when Lind chased home Lewis and Alex Gonzalez with a single to right.
LaPorta got a run back in the bottom half, hammering a Morrow fastball over the wall in left center for his first home run since May 16.
Carmona is 3-0 in five lifetime starts against Toronto…Morrow, who had pitched to a 1.32 earned-run average over his previous five starts, is winless in eight road starts this season…Cleveland, which was swept by Toronto back in May, can even the season series Wednesday with Aaron Laffey squaring off against the Blue Jays’ Jesse Litsch.