The Cedar Rapids Kernels celebrate a walk-off win during last year’s Midwest League Championship Series. (Photo by Craig Wieczorkiewicz/The Midwest League Traveler)

The Cedar Rapids Kernels beat the Clinton LumberKings 6-1 Monday to win their eighth straight game and clinch a postseason berth for the fourth consecutive year.

The win, combined with the Peoria Chiefs’ doubleheader sweep of the Burlington Bees earlier in the day, put Cedar Rapids in the playoffs. The Wisconsin Timber Rattlers later lost to the Quad Cities River Bandits (who snapped a nine-game losing streak), giving the Kernels home-field advantage in the first round.

The Bees and the Timber Rattlers are neck-and-neck in the race to claim the second-half Western Division wild-card spot. Whichever team wins will face the Kernels in the playoffs.

The Chiefs and the LumberKings will face each in the other Western Division matchup in the first round of the playoffs. One of the Eastern Division playoff matchups will be the South Bend Cubs against the West Michigan Whitecaps. The Bowling Green Hot Rods are still waiting to find out which team they will face in the other Eastern Division first-round series; with six games left in the regular season, the Great Lakes Loons have a 2.5-game lead over the Lansing Lugnuts and a 3.5-game lead over the Lake County Captains for that slot.

There are no Midwest League games scheduled for Tuesday.