The Ripley baseball team celebrates after advancing to the state tournament. (Photo Provided)

RIPLEY — It appears as though all the pieces are in place for the Ripley baseball program of skipper Shane Casto to make a run at defending their Class AAA state championship.

Things already have been different this year as the Vikings had to deal with injuries during the regular season.

Now, the state field has expanded to eight teams in each of the four classes and the new site for the big show is Jack Cook Field at Marshall University.

Ripley, which will find out next week what its seed and bracket will look like, finished with 27 wins last spring and brought its third state baseball title back to Jackson County, joining the 2004 and 1997 programs.

West Virginia University commit Bryson Casto got off to an inauspicious start to his junior campaign and that was soon followed by catcher Peyton Keller, who leads the team with four homers, and is one of seven Vikings batting better than .300.

“He actually got two at-bats in and was out for 18 games,” admitted coach Casto of his son. “Second at-bat he squared around to bunt and took off to first and kind of slipped. Then tried to get up and take off, well he did take off, and pulled a hip flexor.”

The good news is Bryson Casto and Keller are both back to full strength.

In fact, Casto just fired a one-hit shutout on Thursday versus Logan where he walked two and punched out seven.

“The good thing about it, nobody wants to look at next year, but there are going to be guys that you know down the road for you are going to be pitchers or shortstop or whatever, catcher, but when you have guys go down, and the (Peyton) Keller kid, our catcher was out, for 11 games as well,” said the coach. “We had both of them gone for 11 games, but we were able to get some guys that you know like I thought ‘we need to make sure this guy gets some at-bats this year, gets on the mound this year, get some innings’ and instead of kind of getting their feet wet we kind of grabbed them and threw them in. It was sink or swim.

“There were times that they sunk and there were times that they swam. It was good for future purposes to get those guys out there. Now that we’ve gotten everybody back, and I’m a believer you don’t lose your starting spot or lose your job because of an injury, especially when it was baseball related. Those guys are back and we slowly kind of worked them in. It’s good for us that we’re playing these games so those guys can get a few more reps because about the time they came back was about the time hitters are starting to get hot. They are coming back and everybody is getting hot and they are trying to knock some rust off, and getting pitched tough because they’ve made some names for themselves.”

Casto, who is a two-time honoree on the all-state first team, was an all-tournament selection last year along with Brady McVay, Landon Meadows and the graduated Jackson Curry. Curry fired a shutout in the 5-0 title game win versus Frankfort.

Although not set in stone, coach Casto said the lineup they used for the Logan game on Thursday could be what’s turned in for the state quarterfinal matchup.

Following the leadoff man Casto, who is hitting .326 and is now 4-0 with an 0.56 earned run average, is Keller at catcher, twin brother Parker Keller at third, McVay in left at cleanup and then Meadows at first, Kyler Doss at second, Cash Clendenin in right, John Cummings at shortstop and Eli Phalen in center.

Phalen has 10 extra-base hits that includes three triples and a pair of round-trippers. Parker Keller leads the team in average (.330), doubles (9) and is tied for the team lead in RBIs with Doss at 22. Parker Keller, who has three bombs to go with six wins and a 3.35 ERA, trails his brother by one homer for the team lead. Meadows has gone deep twice and driven in 21.

“It’s been a little frustrating for them at first, but they are starting to get back into the swing of it and get all the kinks worked out,” added the coach, who has watched Cooper Bentley knock in 18 while sporting a .328 average. “You can tell our chemistry is back that we were kind of lacking. They are playing more confident now and we’ve won eight or 10 in a row (nine). There were some big wins along the way with Hurricane and GW, and some good wins there as well.

“They are playing with some confidence for sure right now. It’s good to get these tune-up games and Logan came up and threw the (Ivan) Miller kid for 50 pitches and we got to see him, and Independence is in the state tournament and they are going to come up Monday. They got some good players and then we’ll play Hurricane next Friday down at Capital. We’re going to see some quality opponents leading up to it and try to stay hot at the right time and keep this team rolling.”

While the Vikings await the state bracket, the Ripley head man was less than sure as to whether he likes the entire new format or not.

“I do like the eight teams,” admitted coach Casto. “I’m not sure what to think of the layoff now. Maybe that will work out nicely. I’ll be able to tell you more after the state tournament is over. Truthfully, if you got some guys with sore arms it’s a good time to get them rest, but if you’re hot you obviously want to keep playing and you don’t want that time off.

“We’re on the hot end right now so we want to play, but I do like the eight teams. It will be different to plan for. We would be Tuesday, Friday, Saturday to win it so then we could have our ace on Tuesday, but we got to win Friday and we can have our ace back on Saturday. If you’re in the quad-A situation you got Wednesday, Friday, Saturday so that’s a little different.”

Contact Jay Bennett at jbennett@newsandsentinel.com