"A night after a painful late-inning loss to the Dodgers, the A's nearly gave up another one because of recurring errors.

On Wednesday, though, Oakland's bullpen was able to overcome the defensive lapses, pinning down a 5-4 victory over the Dodgers, baseball's winningest team, and snapping a four-game losing streak. Onetime closer Brad Ziegler helped avert potential disaster with two well-timed double-play balls, and Andrew Bailey, who'd blown a save the previous night, finished things up.

Bailey allowed a leadoff infield single to Rafael Furcal, but Orlando Hudson popped up a bunt, James Loney fouled out and Casey Blake hit into a force.

"It's nice to bounce back with the victory," Bailey said. "We're trying hard to put everything together. We had a couple of errors, but we persevered through that."

Oakland made three errors, leading to three unearned runs for Los Angeles.

"So many times we've played well and came up short," A's manager Bob Geren said. "Tonight we really played poorly and were fortunate to win."

Jack Cust was responsible for the most glaring of the errors, dropping a flyball in the seventh that led to a run. But Cust insists that he always hits well in games in which he makes errors, and Wednesday, he mashed a two-run homer his second time up. His next time up, he bunted for a base hit against the shift, and that led to a run, too.

Rajai Davis provided Oakland's first home run, a solo shot leading off the third inning against Hiroki Kuroda. It was Davis' first homer of the season. The next batter, rookie starter Trevor Cahill, recorded his first major-league hit, squeaking a groundball into right, providing Cust with a baserunner for his homer.

"I could surprise some people, I think," Cahill said with a smile."