rookie right-hander

Christian Walker homered twice and the Houston Astros beat the Angels 6-1 on Saturday night, a couple of hours after getting eliminated from playoff contention.

Zach Cole and Jesús Sánchez also went deep for the Astros, who will miss the postseason for the first time since 2016.

Walker was batting in the second inning when Cleveland scored in the bottom of the ninth at Progressive Field for a 3-2 victory over Texas that clinched the final American League playoff spot for the Guardians and eliminated the Astros.

That snapped Houston’s streak of eight consecutive playoff appearances, a run that featured seven straight trips to the AL Championship Series from 2017-2023 and World Series titles in 2017 and 2022.

With Saturday night’s game rendered moot, Astros manager Joe Espada pulled his top three batters — Jose Altuve, Isaac Paredes and Carlos Correa — after two innings.

Cole followed Yainer Diaz’s second-inning single with a two-run homer off Angels starter Caden Dana (0-4). Walker led off the fourth with a homer for a 3-0 lead. Cole walked and Sanchez lined a two-run homer to right field for a 5-0 lead. Walker’s solo shot — his 27th of the season — made it 6-1 in the ninth.

Houston starter AJ Blubaugh gave up one hit in four scoreless innings against the Angels (72-89), and reliever J.P. France (1-0) allowed one run and two hits in three innings, striking out five and walking one.

Dana, the Angels’ rookie right-hander, permitted five runs and five hits in seven innings.

Key moment: France gave up an RBI double to Jo Adell and walked Logan O’Hoppe to put two on with one out in the sixth, but the right-hander struck out Christian Moore and Oswald Peraza to preserve a 5-1 lead.

Key stat: Sunday’s season finale will be only the fourth game since the start of the 2015 season that the Astros (86-75) will play while out of postseason contention. The other three came at the end of 2016, when Houston was eliminated from the wild-card race on Sept. 29.

Up next: Astros RHP Lance McCullers Jr. (2-5, 6.71 ERA) will start Sunday against Angels LHP Sam Aldegheri (0-1, 8.00).

SAN DIEGO — There was a one-handed finish. A slow stroll out of the batter’s box. And a leisurely, long-awaited trip around the bases.

It’d been a while since Teoscar Hernández last admired such a momentous home run ball.

It was a sight the struggling Dodgers had come to sorely miss.

Ever since returning from an adductor strain last month, Hernández had endured one of his coldest stretches at the plate since joining the Dodgers last year. He was batting .171 over 20 games since his mid-May return to the lineup. He had just three hits in 38 at-bats over his last 10 contests.

His struggles, which also included only one home run since April 28, had become so pronounced that they finally reached a tipping point ahead of Wednesday’s series finale against the San Diego Padres, with manager Dave Roberts moving Hernández out of his customary cleanup spot in the batting order in favor of hot-hitting catcher Will Smith.

“I love him in the four [spot] when he’s right,” Roberts said pregame. “But clearly the last few weeks, he’s been scuffling.”

With one swing in the top of the sixth, however, Hernández finally started to look right again.

In what was a tie game at Petco Park, on a day first place in the National League West was up for grabs, Hernández delivered the decisive blow in the Dodgers’ 5-2 win over the Padres, belting a three-run home run to straightaway center that sent the club a pivotal series victory.

Hernández’s sixth-inning at-bat was everything his recent trips to the plate hadn’t been during his weeks-long slump.

He finally got ahead in a 2-and-0 count — something Roberts had noted was a rarity for the 32-year-old slugger of late, in large part because of his inability to punish mistakes in his hitting zone.

“Balls that he should move forward, he’s not,” Roberts said. “And with that, there’s more chase, because he’s getting behind.”

And when Padres reliever Jeremiah Estrada did serve up a mistake over the plate, Hernández didn’t miss it, clobbering a 2-and-1 fastball down the middle for a 420-foot drive that broke open the game.

The Dodgers (41-28) got other heroics in Wednesday’s rubber-match triumph, one that gives them a two-game lead in the division over the Padres (38-29).

Ben Casparius gave up just one run in a four-inning start, replacing originally listed starter Justin Wrobleski in what could be a permanent move to the starting rotation for the rookie right-hander (or, at least, until the rest of the Dodgers’ banged-up pitching staff gets healthy in the coming months).

“With things that are going on with the rotation — and obviously the way Ben’s performed, being a former starting pitcher — we like this kind of transition right now,” Roberts said of Casparius, who had been serving as a swingman in the bullpen for most of the season. “What that means after today, we’ll see … Potentially there’s a chance to continue to build him up, which right now makes sense.”

Michael Conforto, meanwhile, got the game tied at 1-1 with an opposite-field homer in the fifth, marking just his second long ball since April 5.

Even in the sixth inning, Hernández wasn’t alone. With one out, Freddie Freeman legged out an infield single, despite playing through not only his gimpy right ankle but also “a little quad thing” Roberts said he has been dealing with in recent days. Then, Smith reached base for the first of three times on the day by drawing a key one-out walk.

Four pitches later, both preceded Hernández on his trot around the bases after he came through with his go-ahead swing.

The Padres didn’t go away down the stretch. A Hyeseong Kim throwing error led to one run in the sixth, trimming the Dodgers’ lead back down to two runs. Then in the seventh, the command problems that plagued recently activated reliever Michael Kopech during his minor-league rehab stint last month reared their ugly head, with the right-hander issuing three-straight one-out walks in the seventh to load the bases.

Anthony Banda, however, escaped that jam in a continuation of his recent return to form (he has given up just three runs over his last 13 outings). Tanner Scott maintained his own recent turnaround with a scoreless eighth inning (giving him five consecutive scoreless appearances) before Alex Vesia emerged for his third save of the season in the ninth.