CLEVELAND -- Don't say Jake Westbrook didn't show his mettle on Sunday, because if nothing else, the Indians right-hander surely showed his ability to hang tough in the face of trouble.

Relying on guts and not great stuff, Westbrook righted himself after a shaky start to give the Indians time to wipe out a 2-0 deficit. The Tribe then went on to beat the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 12 innings, 5-4, in front of 21,097 fans at Jacobs Field.

"He gave up those hits early," Indians manager Eric Wedge said of Westbrook. "But he really shut 'em down for a while there. I was pleased with his effort."

That effort from Westbrook helped set the stage for Ryan Ludwick's RBI single in the 12th off reliever Jesus Colome, who fueled the game-winning rally with a leadoff walk to Ben Broussard. Casey Blake's sacrifice bunt moved Broussard to second, and he raced home on Ludwick's single to give the Tribe the win.

"That last at-bat they came inside," said Ludwick, who went 3-for-6 with three RBIs. "I didn't get a real good piece of wood on it, but I stayed short. I got jammed a little bit and hit a line drive."

His line drive fell in for a single -- and an Indians win. But make no mistake, winning would have been all but impossible for the Tribe had Westbrook not found his rhythm.

In the first and second innings, the 25-year-old right-hander pitched himself in and out of bases-loaded jams. He gave up just two runs.

Westbrook didn't let Tampa Bay score another run during his tour of duty, which lasted until the seventh.

"When you do kind of struggle the first part of the game, you've got to buckle down and be able to get through the fifth or sixth inning and help your team out," he said. "If you collapse right there early in the game, you can be down by five, six, seven or eight runs instead of one, two or three."

But Westbrook didn't collapse. Because he didn't, he left the Indians in a good position to rev up their offense.

While they didn't produce any big innings off left-hander Joe Kennedy, the Indians did cobble together mini-rallies in the second and fourth. The Tribe scored a run in each of those innings, tying the game on catcher Tim Laker's RBI double.

One inning later, the Indians got a helping hand from the Devil Rays to break the 2-2 tie. That help came from third baseman Damian Rolls, whose mishandling of John McDonald's hard grounder jump-started the inning.

Three batters later, McDonald scored on Ludwick's two-out single, which ended Kennedy's afternoon. The Indians didn't get another run that inning. But at least they had the lead.

By that point, Westbrook had navigated the rough waters of those first two innings well, and he survived.

In the seventh, he put a 3-2 lead in the hands of the Indians relief corps, but the bullpen let that 3-2 lead slip away.

More specifically, reliever Rafael Betancourt gave up a run in the seventh on a leadoff walk to Carl Crawford, a stolen base, a fly to right-center and Aubrey Huff's sacrifice fly to left.

In the 10th, newly-installed closer David Riske gave up a solo homer to Travis Lee, who put the Devil Rays ahead, 4-3. The Indians countered in the bottom of the inning on Ludwick's RBI single off reliever Jorge Sosa, who had replaced Kennedy in the fifth, to tie the game.

The Tribe then won the ballgame in the 12th on Ludwick's third single.

"Ryno's had some big hits for us," said Wedge, whose club has won its last six extra-inning games. "I mean, he's a guy who wants to be up there in that situation. Again, he had two big ones for us again today. This is a guy we feel strongly about."

Justice B. Hill is a senior writer for MLB.com. This story was not subject to approval by Major League Baseball or its clubs.