"Reserve release has been boosting EPS and while it likely fades, the tank doesn't look empty yet," analysts led by John McDonald said in a note to clients.

Reserve release as a percentage of earnings is likely to fall from around 22 percent of EPS at the large- and mid-cap banks in 2012 to about 10 percent in 2013 and about 1 percent in 2014, they said.

However, with low interest rates, high liquidity, tightened underwriting and lackluster new lending, credit costs should be able to stay lower for longer, which would help fuel continued reserve releases, the analysts added.

Bernstein analysts also expect net charge off rates to fall below historical average over the intermediate term, as banks benefit from an improving economy, cleaner books, and improved underwriting standards.

Bank of America is likely to benefit the most from the combined impact of lower charge offs and reserve releases, which are expected to constitute about 56 percent of the lender's adjusted annualized first-quarter 2013 earnings. They would be about 55 percent for Synovus Financial Corpand about 52 percent for Citigroup, the brokerage added.

(Reporting By Neha Dimri in Bangalore; Editing by Maju Samuel)

He didn't deserve any blame for fans leaving early, either, though hundreds found their way to the exit even before the 12th round began.

If they were spending $1,000 and up for tickets to a brawl, they should have known better. Mayweather built a career on not getting hit, and there was no reason to think he was going to make the same mistakes as last year against Miguel Cotto against a fighter whose only hope of winning was to rough him up.

Instead of booing, they should have been applauding. Instead of leaving, they should have been on their feet cheering.

On the canvas where he does his best work, Mayweather painted a boxing masterpiece only he could produce.

"Everyone was saying at the age of 36 I don't have it no more," Mayweather said. "All I want to do is give fans exciting fights."

This one wasn't as much exciting as it was brilliant. Mayweather used defensive skills built up over a lifetime to take apart a very good fighter Saturday night and do it in such lopsided fashion that ringside judges seemed to be searching for a round to give to Guerrero.

He hit Guerrero with right hand leads all night and might have knocked him out had he not hurt his hand in the eighth round. When Guerrero tried to land big shots of his own, Mayweather was either smothering him on the ropes or had danced out of harm's way.

It was a $32 million display of all that's right about the sweet science. And if it didn't satisfy all the fans at the MGM Grand or those who paid $69.95 for the pay-per-view, it kept Mayweather undefeated in 44 fights in what is becoming a remarkable boxing career.

"I showed the world I can still box," Mayweather said. "I showed my defense is still there. I'm still fast."

Most importantly, perhaps, it showed Mayweather himself that he still has it. After spending two months in jail and a year out of the ring, he returned with a performance that was vintage Mayweather.

His father was back in the corner and was put to good use. Both Floyd Sr. and Floyd Jr. thought the boxer got hit too much when he went toe-to-toe with Cotto last May and were determined to focus on defense against Guerrero, who tried his best for 12 rounds to turn the fight into a brawl, to no avail.

The plan was to hit and not get hit. It worked to perfection, with Guerrero landing only 19 percent of his punches to 41 percent for Mayweather.

"The less you get hit, the longer you last in boxing," Mayweather said.

Mayweather has followed that creed so well that he has lasted 17 years in the sport, and he looks no worse for the wear. He's managed to build a boxing empire on pay-per-view sales despite having a style that is less than crowd pleasing, and his $32 million payday for Guerrero shows he remains a huge attraction.

He wants to fight again in September, which would be the first time since 2007 he fought twice in a calendar year. That could be delayed by his injured right hand, though Mayweather insisted after the fight he would be ready to go.

The question now becomes who Mayweather will face. Upcoming Mexican star Canelo Alvarez would be the most attractive fight, but the short lead time to September virtually ensures that bout won't happen until at least next May, at best.

Mayweather is in the unique position where he can handpick his opponents, and he's been criticized for trying to find fighters he knows he can beat. Alvarez would be a risky fight, one Mayweather might want to save until late in the remaining five fights he has under a deal with Showtime that he says will be the last of his career.

"He's a young guy," Mayweather said of Alvarez. "Floyd Mayweather isn't going to duck anybody. My job is to go out there, rack up victories and be the best Floyd Mayweather I can be."

Whether that is good enough to make Mayweather among the all-time greats was a topic of questioning at the post-fight news conference. Mayweather may be a dominating fighter, but he hasn't had a rivalry to get fight fans excited and he came up with excuse after excuse not to fight Manny Pacquiao when Pacquiao was still in his prime.

He also hasn't fought regularly enough to press a claim for greatness, something that could change if he goes through on plans to fight every six months or so under the Showtime deal.

"I just do what I do," Mayweather said. "I've given this sport my whole life."

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) -- People interested in whether New Hampshire will join about a dozen other states in prohibiting bosses from requiring employees or job applicants to disclose a user name or password to personal social media or email accounts will have to wait another week.

The Senate put off a vote planned on the bill Thursday. The bill would not prohibit an employer from obtaining information about an employee or job applicant that is in the public domain, or prevent the employer from investigating whether the employee is complying with securities or financial laws based on the person's personal website used for business purposes.

The ban would only apply to the worker's personal accounts unrelated to the employer's business, and would not prevent employers from enforcing workplace policies about company equipment.

Vilified by fans for his poor performance in the playoffs. Pursued by Major League Baseball in yet another case involving performance-enhancing drugs. Called out by his employer for not behaving like a Yankee should.

A Lightning Rod for all the wrong reasons, none of the off-field distractions and there have been plenty have seemed to have had any effect on A-Rod in the past.

It shouldn't be any different this time.

As MLB ramps up its investigation into the Florida anti-aging clinic linked to the sale of performance-enhancing drugs to Rodriguez and more than a dozen major league players, the three-time AL MVP quietly rehabs his surgically repaired hip at the Yankees' minor league facility in Tampa, Fla., with plans to return in the second half of the season with "a lot of unfinished business."

Even as a solitary figure on a field in Florida, Rodriguez is a bother in the Bronx.

Earlier this week, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman told ESPN he didn't think the 14-time All-Star third basemen could live up to his record $275 million, 10-year contract that runs through 2017. A day later managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner piled on, saying "there have no doubt been times when we've been disappointed in him and we've conveyed that to him and he understands that."

There's been plenty to be disappointed about.

After winning his second MVP and earning his fourth of seven All-Star nods with the Yankees in 2007, Rodriguez opted out of his contract during the World Series, rankling baseball executives. Two years later he admitted using steroids while with the Texas Rangers from 2001-03. He's also been investigated for participating in illegal poker games.

Rodriguez is as careless as Yankees captain Derek Jeter is discreet. A-Rod has been repeatedly splashed on the gossip pages with Madonna, Kate Hudson, Cameron Diaz and Torrie Wilson. He caused a stir when he was seen with a stripper in Toronto and at a swingers' club in Dallas. For a magazine spread, he was photographed kissing his reflection in a full-length mirror no one loves Alex more than Alex.

And that's just off the field.

Last October, he was benched in three of nine games and pinch-hit for in three others after being removed from Game 1 of the AL championship series, he was caught flirting with fans in the stands. His next hit against a right-handed pitcher will be his first in 19 at-bats. He was 0 for 18 in the postseason against righties. With each of his outs, fans booed more loudly and were more decisively convinced that he was done as a player.

But there is no end with A-Rod.

And there's little the Yankees can do about it and the remaining $104 million of Rodriguez's contract.

There was a time when Rodriguez was touted as the star who would restore credibility to the record book. Now MLB wants to throw the book at him.

And the Yankees might prefer it if he just goes away.

Even if MLB suspends Rodriguez for 50 or 100 games for his connection to Biogenesis of America and its founder Anthony Bosch, the Yankees can't use that to void his contract because of language in baseball's drug agreement.

Yankees ace CC Sabathia said he and his teammates are behind Rodriguez no matter what comes out of the investigation.

"There'll be nothing but love and support in here," he said.

But the drug agreement does allow for a team to void a contract if it is proven that a player's injury was a direct result of his use of performance enhancers.

The physician who performed Rodriguez's surgery in January, Dr. Bryan Kelly of the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, debunked that theory. He said the condition, known as femoral acetabular impingement, was caused by genes, not by steroids.

"This is a developmental, genetic predisposition to a certain shape of the hip joint that occurs during the first 15 years of development," Kelly said. "Steroids don't change the shape of your bones, of your hip joint."

That leaves the Yankees in the position of hoping the soon-to-be 38-year-old Rodriguez will retire a big money saver for the team or can have a resurgence similar to the one he had in 2009, when he returned from his first hip surgery and nearly single-handedly led the team to its first World Series title since 2000.

Of course, that New York love-in for Rodriguez didn't last long. The following spring he was tied to Anthony Galea, the Canadian doctor who was indicted in part for illegal possession of human growth hormone with intent to distribute. The team made it known they never authorized Rodriguez to be treated by Galea.

Mission managers said Friday that the plan calls for arriving at its new destination 1 1/2 miles to the south by August so that the solar-powered rover can be in a favorable spot before the next Martian winter.

Opportunity has been exploring Endeavour Crater since 2011. It's the largest of five craters examined by the six-wheel rover so far and contains some of the oldest deposits dating back to the first billion years of Mars' history.

Before trekking off last month, Opportunity used a grinder to scrape away the top layer of a light-colored rock for a peek inside. The rock was so lumpy and covered with crud that it took the rover several tries to crack open its secrets.

Unlike other rocks that Opportunity inspected during the past nine years, the latest told a different story: It contained clay minerals, a sign that water coursed through it, and formed in an environment that might have been suitable for microbes.

Previous rock studies by Opportunity pointed to a watery past on Mars, but scientists said the water was acidic.

"This is water you can drink," said mission chief scientist Steve Squyres of Cornell University.

Since landing on opposite ends of the red planet in 2004, Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, have impressed scientists with their longevity. Both outlasted their original, three-month warranty.

While Opportunity continues to plow ahead, Spirit's mission came to an end when it got stuck in sand and stopped communicating in 2010.

Project manager John Callas said Opportunity showed signs of wear, but was otherwise in good health. It recently experienced a bout of amnesia with its flash memory, but Callas said it was not serious.

Opportunity is not the only Mars rover on the move. Earlier this week, NASA said its newest rover, Curiosity, will soon head to a Martian mountain.

___

Follow Alicia Chang at http://twitter.com/SciWriAlicia

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- Indiana's average gas price soared Wednesday to nearly $4.16 a gallon, putting the state some 50 cents above the national average in a surge one economist blamed on "a perfect storm of refinery outages."

The website Gasbuddy.com said Indiana's average price of a gallon of unleaded regular gas was about $4.16 Wednesday afternoon, compared with the national average of about $3.64 a gallon. Indiana's highest average gas price was set in May 2011, when it reached $4.26 a gallon, the website states.

Purdue University economist Wally Tyner said Indiana's gas prices had already been rising, but the average price increased about a dime Wednesday alone. He said he's never seen such a large price gap between Indiana's average and the U.S. average.

The surge at the pump comes just as many Indiana families are embarking on summer vacations.

Tyner said scheduled maintenance work at BP's Whiting refinery in northwestern Indiana and at Exxon Mobil's refinery in Joliet, Ill., was already taking longer than expected reducing regional gas supplies when a Marathon oil refinery in Detroit was hit by a late April fire and other refineries had some glitches.

"It's a just a perfect storm of refinery outages," he said. "All these other things had been there, but then the Detroit fire was the straw that broke the camel's back. We've just had a series of unlucky draws."

Tyner recently said he expected this summer's Midwestern gas prices to be lower than last summer's. He said the maintenance work at the BP Whiting refinery had reduced its gas output by about two-thirds before the Detroit refinery fire and the Joliet refinery's ongoing maintenance combined to shrink gas supplies and boost prices.

Tyner said it could take a few weeks for gas prices to drop as the regional refineries come back to full production. Until then, people planning Midwestern vacations will be paying significantly more for gas than other Americans.

"If you're vacationing, once you're out of here you're OK," he said.

Gasbuddy.com on Wednesday showed that Michigan's average gas price was about $4.21 a gallon, Illinois' average price was $4.18 a gallon and Kentucky had an average of nearly $3.63 a gallon.

Indiana's highest average gas prices were in the state's northern region, with the highest about $4.25 a gallon in Gary and South Bend and the lowest, in Evansville, at nearly $3.78.

Michael Green, a AAA spokesman, said the Midwestern surge in gas prices had prompted many Americans to postpone travel plans while they wait for prices to drop.

"The sad fact is that motorists are in a wait-and-see mode, waiting for refineries to increase production. This is very frustrating for people taking their summer trips," he said.

Green said the hope is that the affected refineries can ramp up their production during June, helping alleviate the supply problems. He said BP Whiting and Exxon Mobil's Joliet plant are two of the nation's largest oil refineries.

Minnesota and North Dakota recently set record high average gas prices after the cost of a gallon of gas in those states soared between 60 cents and 80 cents a gallon, he said.

Prosecutors charged Marco Cruz, a 47-year-old Miami man who works as a cargo clerk at the airport, with stealing a box of six gold bars last month that arrived as cargo on an American Airlines flight from Ecuador.

The cargo was unloaded but a box containing the gold vanished after apparently being loaded onto a motorized luggage cart.

When cargo workers noticed the box was missing, they alerted authorities.

Ramses Llufrio, a 38-year-old pawn shop owner, was charged with receiving the gold bars knowing they had been stolen, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami said in a statement. Llufrio purchased five gold bars from Cruz for $250,000, it said.

As part of its investigation into the heist, officials interviewed airline employees including Cruz, who initially denied any involvement.

He later agreed to allow investigators to search his home and police found one of the bars and $200,000 in cash. He later gave a law enforcement official the additional $50,000.

If convicted, the men face a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

Miami International is a major trans-shipment point for large quantities of gold produced in South America.

Gold is Miami's No. 1 import valued at almost $8 billion last year, mostly from Mexico and Colombia and almost all destined for Switzerland, according to World City, a Miami-based publication that tracks trade data.

(Reporting by Kevin Gray; Editing by Bernard Orr)

TOKYO (Reuters) - Prime Minister Shinzo Abe could be about to take the biggest bet of his six-month old administration - sucking the savings of the country's notoriously risk-averse and fast ageing constituents out of the relative safe haven of government bonds.

He could announce the move as soon as Wednesday as part of a package of measures designed to kick economic growth into a higher gear. The prime minister has already pushed through $100 billion in government spending and shaken up monetary policy by prodding the Bank of Japan into a $1.4 trillion stimulus effort.

Having long prescribed "bold" economic measures to turn around 15 years of grinding deflation and sluggish economic growth, he now wants the nation's public pensions to take more risk with their $2 trillion pool of funds.

It is a policy that directly affects tens of millions of Japanese workers and pensioners in a country that is very conscious of how rapidly it is ageing. A government survey last year estimated those aged 65 or over would double by 2060.

"The government is trying to do this with pension money," said Nobusuke Tamaki, a professor at Otsuma Women's University and a former director general of the country's biggest public pensions fund, the Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF).

"But how would the public at large feel if their pensions suffer huge losses? Politicians need to talk to the public about this and debate the issue in an intensive way."

Shifting hundreds of billions of dollars from bonds into riskier assets, such as equities or infrastructure financing, also risks disrupting markets, already jittery following two weeks of volatility and some analysts questioned if the public funds had the expertise to manage greater investment risk.

The justification is that nudging GPIF and dozens of other public and semi-public funds to diversify could increase returns while supporting Abe's push to drive Japan out of its deflationary spiral.

LAGGARD

GPIF's returns have lagged some other big national pensions funds and its asset allocation is more risk averse.

It hit its own internal return targets in recent years, a payout of 1.1 percentage point over wage increases in the economy. But it has been helped in that by falling salaries.

Wages have dropped by almost a percent per year over the past nine years. GPIF's total return on investment over the same period averaged 2.4 percent a year based on a target portfolio that allocates two-thirds of the fund to domestic bonds.

But it has underperformed funds like Canada's Pension Plan Investment Board, with $183 billion in assets, and Norway's $686 billion pool of government savings from petroleum revenue known as the Government Pension Fund Global. Both these funds allocate most of their money to equities.

Norway's GPFG, for example, has a 60 percent weighting in equity markets and 40 percent in bonds and real estate. It returned almost 6 percent a year over the past decade.

Critics have long said GPIF lacks the staff, budget or investment mandate to keep pace with other large public funds.

It has more than $1 trillion under management, but only about 70 staff working from a non-descript office in Tokyo's Kasumigaseki district.

An advisory panel to the pension fund had been working on proposed changes to its investment strategy since April, before the Abe-backed reform proposals surfaced.

With its bureaucratic-payscale, the fund also lacks the ability to lure star fund managers. The highest paid employee is the chairman, Takahiro Mitani, who made the equivalent of $192,000 for the fiscal year ended March 2012.

IT WON'T BE CHEAP

Professor Tamaki said it is uncertain if Abe can convince the Japanese public to support the kinds of reforms needed to make it more like counterparts in Canada or Norway.

"We would have to budget to hire professionals and that won't be cheap," he said. "Very importantly, the government should set up a means to govern and evaluate those new professional fund managers to convince the Japanese public. That won't be easy."

Even with its conservative portfolio, GPIF took a loss of almost 8 percent in 2008 during the global financial crisis.

A higher weighting on equities would mean accepting higher risk in a crisis, a potentially unpopular choice in Japan where many chose to keep savings in almost interest-free bank deposits.

There is also the risk to the Japanese government bond (JGB) market just as it is trying to adjust to huge bond buying by the more activist Bank of Japan, a reason behind recent volatility.

Shifting to the bond-weighting of Norway or Canada would mean GPIF pulling 27 trillion yen ($272 billion) from the JGB market. That would be over half of the amount of additional JGBs that the Bank of Japan has pledged to buy this year as part of a massive round of asset purchases under its stimulus program.

At the same time, GPIF would have to invest another 45 trillion yen ($454 billion) in equities to match the portfolio of its international peers in Canada and Norway.

The scale of the shift means any changes would have to be gradual, analysts said.

"Pension funds tend to play it safe," said Toshihiko Matsuno, senior strategist at SMBC Friend Securities. "It's too early to believe that pension funds are aggressively chasing the market higher."

CREDIBILITY TEST?

Abe's also faces losing some hard-won credibility with markets. Talk of the shift in pension fund investment strategy is emerging at a time when the Nikkei average, Japan's benchmark stock index, has been in retreat and near six-week lows.

It is still up more than 50 percent since Abe started pushing his brand of economic policies, but investors are uncertain about the shape of his growth strategy for the future.

Abe is expected to announce the setting up of special economic zones, targets for domestic private-sector investment and a doubling of farm exports. But analysts say he will avoid major reforms, such as big deregulation or labor reform ahead of an upper-house election in July.

With that vote looming, some questioned whether Abe's team was resorting to the kind of tactics that previous Liberal Democratic Party administrations had tried and famously failed to make work.

In the early 1990s, the pension savings that were later organized into GPIF were a regular target for finance ministry officials who tried to support stock prices with public funds.

The policies - known as "Price Keeping Operations" in a play on the United Nations' organized Peace Keeping Operations - failed and even backfired by encouraging banks to hold riskier assets, said Junji Narita, a professor at Aoyama Gakuin, who has studied the period.

Many say the key is what Abe does on other aspects of economic reform.

"Tweaking pension funds' investment policy is a step forward but it has to be accompanied by structural changes," said Xiao Minjie, an independent economist in Tokyo. "There have to be strategies to make domestic investors feel justified in investing in home markets."

He added: "Markets are desperately looking for that kind of detail."

(Reporting by Chikafumi Hodo, Chikako Mogi, Emi Emoto, Taro Fuse, Noriyuki Hirata, Dominic Lau, Takefumi Ito; writing by Kevin Krolicki; Editing by Neil Fullick)

On his first trip to Latin America since taking office and after meeting Venezuela's foreign minister in the first cabinet-level discussion between the two nations in at least several years, Kerry said he was hopeful that a rapprochement could be achieved. The meeting, which came at Venezuela's request, took place just hours after Venezuela released from prison an American filmmaker who had been jailed on espionage charges, removing an immediate irritant in the relationship.

Kerry thanked Foreign Minister Elias Jose Jaua for the release of Timothy Tracy, calling it a "very positive development" and said he and his counterpart had spent about 40 minutes going over in detail areas in which the two countries could cooperate.

"We agreed today both of us, Venezuela and the United States that we would like to see our countries find a new way forward, establish a more constructive and positive relationship and find the ways to do that," he told reporters after the meeting. It took place in Guatemala on the sidelines of the annual Organization of American States general assembly.

"We agreed today there would an ongoing, continuing dialogue at a high-level between the State Department and the foreign ministry and we will try to set out an agenda on which we agree on things we can work on together," Kerry said.

He said the two countries aim to "begin to change the dialogue between our countries and hopefully quickly move to the appointment of ambassadors between our nations." That process, he said, could lead "ultimately to a series of steps that will indicate to the people of both countries as well as to the region that we're finding a way forward to a more constructive and understandable relationship."

The two countries haven't had ambassadors posted in each other's capitals since 2010 near the height of the estrangement between the U.S. and late populist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who died in March.

The Obama administration has been eager to mend ties with Venezuela since the death of Chavez, who delighted in tweaking the United States and pursued policies that U.S. officials regarded as hostile. However, until Wednesday there had been little to show for the outreach.

In fact, U.S.-Venezuelan relations had been especially tense in recent months. Nicolas Maduro, a Chavez protege who claimed victory in the presidential election, expelled two U.S. military attaches in March the same day Chavez died, accusing them of trying to foment instability, and Tracy's arrest came amid domestic political turmoil over the election to replace Chavez.

In addition to being the first ministerial level meeting between the two nations since 2009, Wednesday's talks were the first significant contact between the two since the disputed April 14 election to replace Chavez. The opposition is still contesting the results.

Washington is willing to work with Maduro's new government but has said opposition questions about the electoral process must be addressed. The Obama administration has backed opposition candidate Henrique Capriles' call for a full recount.

But Kerry offered his thanks to Maduro, referring to him as president, after his meeting with the foreign minister.

"I want to thank the foreign minister, I want to thank President Maduro for taking the step to meet here on the sidelines of this conference," Kerry said. "I think it was a very important step."

U.S. officials have said despite the desire to move forward with a new chapter in ties with Venezuela, Washington would not stop expressing concerns about democracy and human rights in the country, particularly after the election.

Shortly before the two men were to meet, Venezuela released Tracy who had been jailed for what authorities said were attempts to destabilize the country.

President Barack Obama called that allegation "ridiculous." Family and friends say the 35-year-old Hollywood producer and actor had been making a documentary about Venezuelan politics when he was arrested on April 24 at the Caracas airport as he tried to leave the country to attend his father's 80th birthday in suburban Detroit.

Meanwhile, in a speech to the 35-member OAS annual general assembly, Kerry did not mention the developments with Venezuela, but reiterated U.S. concerns that some countries in the hemisphere are backsliding on their commitments to democracy and seeking to weaken OAS institutions that monitor and report on human rights.

"We must keep this organization's focus on its core objectives," Kerry said, calling for the OAS to redouble its efforts on protecting basic freedoms, improving rule of law and fighting corruption. "The Americas present a vivid example to the world that diversity is a strength, that inclusion works, that justice can overcome impunity, and that the rights of individuals must be protected against government overreach and abuse."

Kerry is pushing the candidacy of the US nominee for the Inter American Commission on Human Rights, James Cavallaro, a Stanford University law professor who is one of six people in the running for three spots on the panel that will be chosen later this week. Some OAS members are opposed to the U.S. having a presence on the commission because it is not also a member of the organization's human rights court.

"None of our countries is perfect, and we continue to draw strength from scrutiny and the opportunity to review our human rights practices," he said. "We are all diminished when we fail to defend the very institutions we created to safeguard the noble ideals (of) peace, democracy, development, liberty, and social justice based on respect for the essential rights of women and men."

A solution, however, was easy to find.

"Everybody's tired," joked Indians manager Terry Francona. "It's amazing...show up, have 12 pieces of bacon and a Red Bull and go get 'em."

While the pregame meal may have played a factor in Saturday's 5-0 win over Tampa Bay, the Indians found other reasons that led to their success. Ubaldo Jimenez pitched eight scoreless innings while Jason Giambi and Asdrubal Cabrera hit two-run homers in the game that began about 10 hours following the conclusion of Friday night's contest that ended at 2:53 a.m. on Saturday after nearly five hours of rain delays.

Despite his big day, which included and RBI single in the third, Giambi admitted he was exhausted.

"I'm delirious right now," he said. "I feel like Pinocchio with no strings. My last two at-bats I thought about bunting because of the bat speed that I have, but then I said, I have to run. I was done."

Jimenez (4-3) gave the Indians exactly what they needed. The right-hander allowed four hits and struck out seven in stopping Tampa Bay's six-game winning streak. The Rays, who rolled to a 9-2 win earlier Saturday morning, had only two runners reach second base.

"On a day where the only two people probably out there who weren't tired were the starting pitchers, he gave us every bit what we needed," Francona said.

Giambi homered in his third straight game to give the Indians a 2-0 lead in the second. He added an RBI single in third while Cabrera's two-run blast came in the fifth.

Tampa Bay right-hander Chris Archer (0-1), called up from Triple A-Durham before the game, allowed five runs in four innings. He faced three batters in the fifth and was pulled after Nick Swisher lined a single off his glove following Cabrera's home run. The force of the blow knocked Archer to the ground. He was uninjured but was removed by manager Joe Maddon.

No one could blame either team for feeling tired after a long night at the ballpark Friday when three rain delays totaling 4:49 pushed a game that began on the last day of May into the early hours of the first day in June. Neither team took batting practice on the field Saturday for the game that began at 1:05 p.m.

"It's part of the job," Swisher said. "It's what we get paid to do. We were here early this morning. Guys were pumped up. We had the music blasting. We needed a win like this, especially with the way early this morning ended."

Maddon admitted his team was dragging a bit.

"Our guys legitimately were tired today and I don't blame them," he said. "I really respected their effort today. It was a tough day to come back and play this game. We'll get a good night's sleep and come back and do well tomorrow."

Jimenez, winning for the first time since May 11, came within three outs of his fourth career complete game shutout and first since 2011 while pitching for Colorado. Desmond Jennings' seventh-inning double was the only hit he allowed that left the infield. The only walk Jimenez, who threw 108 pitches, gave up was to Matt Joyce leading off the game.

"I felt really good," said Jimenez, who had his longest outing of the season. "The guys had a crazy game last night after waiting for so long to play."

"The biggest guy was Ubaldo," Giambi said. "He was the guy who made it all happen."

Vinnie Pestano pitched the ninth for Cleveland's eighth shutout of the season.

After being held to one hit by four pitchers in Friday's marathon, the Indians woke up against Archer. Swisher drew a leadoff walk in the second before Giambi homered to right on a 2-1 pitch. The veteran slugger also hit a pinch-hit home run Monday against Cincinnati and added a three-run homer against the Reds on Wednesday.

The 42-year-old Giambi, signed to a minor league contract in February, singled home Jason Kipnis in the third. Kipnis started the rally with a one-out double. Giambi has five homers and 19 RBIs in 69 at-bats for the season.

Kipnis also started the fifth-inning rally with a leadoff single and scored when Cabrera hit an 0-1 pitch to right for his fifth homer of the season.

Archer, the Indians' fifth-round selection in 2006, gave up seven hits, struck out four and walked three.

NOTES: Friday's lengthy game forced both teams to makes roster moves with their pitching staffs. The Indians optioned LHP Scott Barnes to Triple-A Columbus and recalled RHP Ryan Langewell from Columbus. Barnes was the losing pitcher Friday, allowing five runs in one inning. ... The Rays optioned LHP Jeff Beliveau to Durham to open a roster spot for Archer. RHP Josh Lueke, who pitched two innings Friday, was also optioned to Durham while LHP Alex Torres was recalled from the same club. Torres allowed one hit in four scoreless innings Saturday. ... Friday's one-hitter was the 10th in Rays' history and the second involving four or more pitchers. ... Tampa Bay LHP Matt Moore, who started Friday's game but only pitched the first inning because of the rain delays, is scheduled to start Thursday in Detroit but that could be pushed up a day or two. ... Rays RHP Jeremy Hellickson (2-2) is scheduled to start Sunday's series finale against RHP Zach McAllister (4-4).