<\/p>\n Related Article: Butler to hire Aiden Albert, former Knoch assistant, as next boys basketball coach<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Wildcats\u2019 key player: Matt Smola can be a dangerous table-setter at the top of the lineup. In his last four playoff games, in which OJR is 3-1 with only a loss in the district championship, the second baseman is 7-of-14 with four runs, six RBIs, a walk, a double and a stolen base. He\u2019s committed to Albright College. On the mound, expect Lucas Campbell, who went all seven innings in the first round with six strikeouts against Stroudsburg, to get the ball.<\/p>\n
Butler wins if … Casteel does what he does best, and the offense continues to get timely hits in the later innings when the pressure ratchets up. Although … the ideal scenario for the Tornado would be for them to get up big early, pull Casteel before he reaches 76 pitches and have him available for a championship game behind Nolan Stefaniak. There might not be a team in better position to win it all in that situation. But let\u2019s not get too far ahead of ourselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Butler pitcher Kyle Casteel has struck out 26 batters in 17 postseason innings and is in line to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":719771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2288],"tags":[5,9331,9323,9318,9338,9344,9347,9322,9326,9324,1242,9325,9330,9321,9343,9337,9320,9341,9329,9319,9332,1358,2328,2304,9345,4,2305,2303,9335,169,6423,3838,9336,7502,9327,9340,9339,9328,9346,9334,9333,9342],"class_list":["post-719770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb-postseason","tag-baseball","tag-bruin","tag-butler","tag-butler-eagle","tag-cabot","tag-callery","tag-cherry-valley","tag-community-news","tag-connoquenessing","tag-cranberry","tag-crime","tag-east-butler","tag-eau-claire","tag-education-news","tag-evans-city","tag-fairview","tag-government-news","tag-harmony","tag-harrisville","tag-high-school-sports-news","tag-karns-city","tag-local-news","tag-major-league-baseball-playoffs","tag-major-league-baseball-postseason","tag-mars","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-playoffs","tag-mlb-postseason","tag-mount-chesnut","tag-news","tag-obituaries","tag-pennsylvania","tag-petrolia","tag-political-news","tag-portersville","tag-sarver","tag-saxonburg","tag-slippery-rock","tag-valencia","tag-west-liberty","tag-west-sunbury","tag-zelienople"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/719771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1780840994_254_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n