Being in a must-win situation won’t be Cody Herald’s primary concern.

He just wants to see the Butler BlueSox play their style of baseball.

The BlueSox struggled in the franchise’s first-ever playoff game Wednesday night at Kelly Automotive Park, dropping Game 1 of the Prospect League East Division Championship series, 5-0.

Butler will play at Chillicothe today in Game 2 of the best-of-3 series.

“We have to go not thinking we have to win,” said Herald, who is a Butler High School graduate. “We need to play our style of baseball. If we play a good solid game, we’ll be OK.”

The BlueSox were 1-5 at the Paints’ home park during the regular season.

Chillicothe manager Greg Cypret doesn’t think the regular-season success will matter in the postseason.

“I want our guys to play with confidence, but we know what they could do,” Cypret said. “We got a couple of balls to fall early, the same thing could happen with them tomorrow.”

The Paints lost to the West Virginia Miners in the past two Eastern Division championships.

Chillicothe pitcher Jason Byers continued his mastery of the BlueSox (40-21).

Byers earned his third win over Butler this season by throwing six scoreless innings and striking out four.

“For a Division III pitcher, you can’t knock anything from him,” Butler manager Anthony Rebyanski said. “He has Division I or Division II stuff in my opinion. When you can locate two or three pitches for strikes, it makes it difficult to get the offense rolling.”

The Paints (41-20) got the lead-off batter on base in five of the first six innings.

Chillicothe nearly took the lead in the second inning, but Joe Hoescheit was thrown out at the plate by BlueSox shortstop Ryan Hanahan.

The Paints broke through in the third. Deion Tansel opened with a single off Butler starting pitcher Ben Hartz.

One batter later, Zach Jacobs walked. Tansel, who moved to second on a passed ball and third on a ground-out, scored on a sacrifice fly by Ronnie Dawson.

Jacobs was nearly picked off heading to second base, but his slide knocked the ball out of Stuart Levy’s glove.

Hoescheit then drove him in with a double to put Chillicothe up 2-0.

“We had some goofy defensive things happen again today,” Rebyanski said. “The key to our season has been having all three elements together. Our defense has slid a little the last few days.”

Butler threatened to score several times and left eight men on base. The BlueSox didn’t have any timely hitting.

A lot of the credit for that went to Byers. Butler finished with five hits.

“Their starting pitcher worked both sides of the plate with every pitch,” Herald said. “The first couple pitches, he would throw you away. The mindset of a hitter is working away, keep going away and he’d come in with something.”

Chillicothe added three more runs in the sixth inning. Hoescheit opened with a double and T.J. Diffenderfer followed with a single.

Matt Hopfner drove in Hoescheit with a sacrifice fly and Gregory Rhude singled in Diffenderfer.

Tansel doubled in Rhude to wrap up the scoring.

Rebyanski’s looking forward to seeing how his team responds.

“We play like we have nothing to lose and we don’t,” Rebyanski said. “If we win, we go Friday. If not, we gave it everything we had.”

Chillicothe 002 003 000 — 5 11 1

Butler 000 000 000 — 0 5 0 W: Jason Byers 6IP (4K, 2BB). L: Ben Hartz 5IP (2K, 1BB).

Chillicothe (41-20): Joe Hoescheit 1B 2-2B, TJ Diffenderfer 2-1B, Deion Tansel 1B 2B, Matt Hopfner 1B, Gregory Rhude 1B, Ronnie Dawson 1B, Chad Sedio 1B.

Butler (40-21): Russell Clark 1B, Cody Herald 1B, Ryan Hanahan 1B, Zac LaNeve 1B, Mick Fennell 1B.

Today: Butler at Chillicothe