ANAHEIM, California (Ticker) -- Gil Heredia tossed seven strong innings for his third straight victory and Ben Grieve and Jeremy Giambi homered as the Oakland Athletics cruised to a 5-2 victory over the Anaheim Angels.

Heredia (4-2) held the Angels scoreless through seven innings but surrendered a leadoff home run to Darin Erstad in the eighth. He allowed five hits, two walks and struck out two.

"Heredia did a great job," Oakland manager Art Howe said. "If you can get seven innings out of your starter then it makes it easy for your bullpen to finish it."

Mike Magnante relieved Heredia and allowed Mo Vaughn's one-out single before Jeff Tam came on and got Tim Salmon to ground into a double play to end the inning.

Tam allowed consecutive one-out singles to Troy Glaus and Orlando Palmiero in the ninth inning before manager Art Howe turned to closer Jason Isringhausen. Isringhausen was greeted by rookie Ben Molina's RBI single before settling down to retire Scott Spiezio and Erstad for his sixth save.

Heredia has been one of the Athletics' more consistent pitchers this year, hurling at least six innings in each of his seven starts while not allowing more than four runs. He has allowed just six earned runs in his last 32 1/3 innings.

"Hopefully I can get the chance to increase my pitch count to 100-110 one of these days," Heredia said. "But it's going to take a lot of work for me to get strong enough. I thought I was lucky tonight."

Oakland jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the second inning against Anaheim starter Ken Hill (3-4). Miguel Tejada singled and Eric Chavez walked before Ramon Hernandez sacrificed. Rookie Terrence Long then singled home Tejada before Randy Velarde followed with a groundout that plated Chavez.

Anaheim received a scare the following inning when Hill doubled over in pain after throwing a pitch to Tejada. He was down for several minutes before walking off the field with a strained rib cage muscle.

"It's pretty bad," Angels manager Mike Scioscia said. "I think you can see by his reaction on the mound when he went down. He'll have an MRI tomorrow."

Scioscia said he noticed Hill grimace on the pitch before, but could not go out there to check on his hurler because he had already made a trip to the mound earlier in the inning.

"The pitch before we saw that something wasn't quite right," he said. "He waved me off and said he was fine."

Grieve opened the fifth inning by launching reliever Eric Weaver's first pitch over the left-center field wall for his fifth homer. Giambi gave the Athletics a 4-0 advantage two innings later with his third homer and second in as many nights.

"Watching him play in spring training, I know he could hit," Grieve said of Giambi. "Then when the season started, he wasn't getting a chance to play that much and he didn't know what was going to happen. But now he's playing every day. He's showing what an awesome hitter he is."

Oakland hit three homers in Monday's wild 9-8 loss to Anaheim and now has 50 this year, second only to Toronto's 66 in the American League.

The A's, who have scored 60 runs over their last six games, improved to 7-4 on their 12-game road trip, while winning for the second time in eight contests at Edison Field.

Anaheim has dropped three of four following a three-game winning streak.