{"id":186880,"date":"2025-09-28T05:08:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T05:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/186880\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T05:08:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T05:08:09","slug":"christian-walker-homers-twice-for-astros-in-win-over-angels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/186880\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian Walker homers twice for Astros in win over Angels"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

Zach Cole and Jes\u00fas S\u00e1nchez also went deep for the Astros, who will miss the postseason for the first time since 2016.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

That snapped Houston\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

With Saturday night\u2019s game rendered moot, Astros manager Joe Espada pulled his top three batters \u2014 Jose Altuve, Isaac Paredes and Carlos Correa \u2014 after two innings.<\/p>\n

Cole followed Yainer Diaz\u2019s 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 S\u00e1nchez lined a two-run homer to right field for a 5-0 lead. Walker\u2019s solo shot \u2014 his 27th of the season \u2014 made it 6-1 in the ninth.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Dana, the Angels\u2019 rookie right-hander, permitted five runs and five hits in seven innings.<\/p>\n

Key moment: France gave up an RBI double to Jo Adell and walked Logan O\u2019Hoppe 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.<\/p>\n

Key stat: Sunday\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Up next: Astros RHP Lance McCullers Jr. (2-5, 6.71 ERA) will start Sunday against Angels LHP Sam Aldegheri (0-1, 8.00).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christian Walker homered twice and the Houston Astros beat the Angels 6-1 on Saturday night, a couple of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[42124,31301,109618,5460,22074,15457,35909,10601,4233,363,109619,51611,5190,99,31303,32796,93720],"class_list":["post-186880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-angels","tag-astros","tag-christian-walker-homer","tag-game","tag-hit","tag-home-run","tag-inning","tag-jose-altuve","tag-lead","tag-mlb","tag-rookie-right-hander","tag-saturday-night","tag-season","tag-sports","tag-two-run-homer","tag-walker","tag-zach-cole"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}