Tigers 6, Indians 1

CLEVELAND (AP) – Just like the Tigers, Mike Maroth has turned around in 2004.

A 21-game loser a year ago, Maroth won his fourth straight decision, leading the Detroit over the Cleveland Indians 6-1 Saturday.

Detroit, which lost an AL-record 119 games last year, improved to 7-4, The Tigers didn’t get their seventh win last year until May 7, when they were 7-25.

Maroth (2-0) gave up one run and 10 hits in 7 1-3 innings and struck out seven. He also worked out of three jams in the middle innings and twice retiring Jody Gerut in key situations.

Last year, Maroth went 9-21 and became the first 20-game loser in the major leagues since Brian Kingman in 1980. He had been 0-2 with an 11.37 ERA against Cleveland.

Gerut came in hitting .338 in his career against Detroit after going 5-for-5 Friday night and has 30 of 81 career RBIs against the Tigers. But he took a called third strike with the bases loaded in the third, and Maroth then struck out Casey Blake to the end the inning.

Maroth got out of a two-on, one-out jam in the fourth and escaped a first-and-third no outs jam in the fifth.

Gerut bounced back to Maroth, who threw to Omar Infante at second for the force. The shortstop then threw out Ronnie Belliard at the plate to complete the double play, and Blake followed with a groundout.

Jason Davis (0-1) gave up three runs, five hits and four walks in 5 1-3 innings.

Alex Sanchez opened the game with a single, stole second, took third when Tim Laker’s throw went wild for an error and scored on Ivan Rodriguez’s grounder.

Rodriguez doubled to open the sixth and scored on Rondell White’s single. Eric Munson’s RBI single off Scott Stewart and Omar Infante’s sacrifice fly made it 4-0.

Fernando Vina’s run-scoring single and White’s RBI groundout extended the lead to six runs in the eighth.

Pinch-hitter Matt Lawton had a sacrifice fly off Al Levine in the bottom half.

Notes: Five players had two hits each for the Tigers, who improved to 21-53 at Jacobs Field, which opened in 1994. … The Indians put RHP Jose Jimenez on the disabled list with a strained left ribcage muscle and purchased the contract of RHP Dave Lee from Triple-A Buffalo … Indians SS Omar Vizquel popped as a pinch hitter in the ninth and remained three hits shy of 2,000 … Rodriguez has multihit games in six of the 10 games he has played. Belliard went 2-for-4 against Maroth and his hitting .571 (12-for-21) against lefties.

AP-ES-04-17-04 1616EDT