Charlotte Knights
Knights April Review
The Charlotte Knights have been an early surprise in a packed Frontier League this season. The Knights opened the season 8-2 and finished April with a 13-10 record good enough for second place in a league with over half its teams posting 10 or more wins in the month. Minneapolis has a healthy three-game lead with a 16-7 record. Led by former waiver wire selection Curt Tullos, the Knights have used power and pitching to jump out to a hot start. Tullos has posted a team-best .988 OPS in the first month of competition and leads the team in home runs with 9 and RBI with 22. The Knights are tied for fourth in the league with 34 home runs with Hector Espinosa adding seven to the total. Much has been made of Espinosa and Addison Russell co-opening a night club in the offseason and whether the eve...
Knights Make Change at the Top
With just 117 wins over the last two seasons, the Charlotte Knights have decided to take a new direction with the storied franchise. Entering as general manager is Barrett Gilham who takes over a squad that went 65-97 a year ago and posted the second-worst ERA in team history. After missing the playoffs in the first two seasons of franchise history, the Knights went to the playoffs in 11 of the next 12 seasons including seven-straight seasons from 2016 to 2022. After missing the playoffs in 2023 they would return the next season and win back-to-back championships in 2025 and 2026. The Knights hit a high watermark with 110 wins in 2027 but missed a three-peat after dropping game seven to the Austin Bats in the Premier Cup Series. “The Knights had an outstanding run for over a d...
Midseason Review: Charlotte Knights
Written by: Brandon Guyer (Knights beat writer) For the second year in a row, the Charlotte Knights have started out slowly, currently in 3rd place, nine and a half games out of the division. Yet for the second year in the row, the Knights have complete faith in their team to come back. This is because this team came back from a similar position in the standings last year to end with the best record in the league before a playoff series sweep of Vancouver, and a series win over San Diego to make their second championship appearance. Today, we were able to sit down and talk with some of the teams players. 1B Jorge Ruíz BG: Jorge, you came to Charlotte as 23 year old with just 5 games played at the AAA level, and the team immediately promoted you to start at the CBL level. How does this show...
Review of the Knights 2020 Rule IV Draft
The age-old adage is that defense wins championships. The Knights went with this strategy when selecting players in this year’s amateur draft. We will break down each pick the team made, along with exclusive content from team personnel. 1st Round: SS Cayman Richardson (Cal Poly University) The months leading up to the draft, the Knights were sending someone to watch Cayman Richardson and Florida University second baseman Dylan Bohnert every game they played. Former scout Dan Kantrovitz, newly hired scout Jeff Clement, bench coach Dino Abel, assisstant general manager Rubén Gómez and even general manager Matt Wells were all in attendance for several games played by each of these talented young players. Similar in playing style, they are entirely different people. Bohnert grew up in Br...
Knights 2020 Season Preview
Last Season When new general manager Matt Wells took over, the Knights looked like the clear-cut favorite to win the Frontier League East. Despite this, Wells saw several areas where the Knights needed to improve. Immediately upgrading the rotation with the additions of Ruben Alaniz and Jake Odorizzi, and acquiring a top prospect in Christopher Machamer, the team still looked poised to win the division. But as the season wore on, the opportunity to acquire the #1 overall prospect presented itself, and Wells took it, even though it meant taking a hit in the current team. His thought process was simple, “This season we didn’t have the depth to win, but if we can get younger and stockpile talent that’s cost controlled, we’ll be golden in future years, when we feel we&#...
Panda Ban in North Carolina
Following the recent playoff series between the beloved Charlotte Knights and the Calgary Mavericks, a large mass of North Carolinians have signed a petition to ban pandas from the state. This comes from the masterful performance of Pablo ‘Panda’ Sandoval, the 33-year-old third baseman for the Mavericks. Despite a mediocre regular season, Panda was spectacular in the postseason, starting off with a simple 1-2 day, but had a home run, the first run for his team. The next game he again started the scoring, providing another home run in a 2-1 victory, going 1-3 on the day. Game 3 was when he really killed the Knights, in Charlotte no less. In the 8th inning he hit a double, scoring the tying run, then in the 13th he crushed a triple to plate the winning run, putting Calgary up 3-0...
What Could Have Been: Jake Odorizzi
On June 9th, at 5:25 am, Jake Odorizzi woke up, like he does every other day, ready to go on a run. He puts on his running shoes and heads out the door. Once he gets back, his wife Carissa is up, making some breakfast in her pajamas. Jake grabs a plate, and Carissa puts some eggs, sausage and toast, with raspberry jelly on it, just the way Jake like it. He pours himself a cup of french vanilla coffee. He sits down at the table, and sees the headline “Odorizzi with the No-no”. Wait wait wait. That didn’t happen. No, it didn’t. But let’s start from the beginning. To start the 2019 season, Jake Odorizzi was a member of the San Diego Surf Dawgs. Always having been seen as a player with tremendous upside, he has never fulfilled this potential. He was shipped off on...
Chaos in Charlotte
We had hoped to sit down with newly appointed general manager of the Charlotte Knights, Matt Wells, as soon as the move happened. This move was very surprising given the Knights success in recent years, making the playoffs three years in a row, and currently sitting in first place. Even more surprising was the naming of Wells as the new general manager. At just age 22, Wells is only one year removed from college graduation, and not only was he not apart of the Knights franchise in any capacity, but he had not held a job for any team in the Continental Baseball League, or for the commissioner’s office. Wells graduated from New York University only 367 days before his naming as the new general manager. Receiving a Bachelor’s of Science in sports management, with a concentration i...
2016 Season Review
What a season it was! After the league agreed to a new 120-game season, up from 82, even that proved to be one game too short. Trey and his Austin Bats were on the wrong end of the play-in game, losing in nail-biting, heart-racing, stomach-punch fashion to Syracuse. It also had to hurt watching Montreal clinch the East division title with a 60-60 record, three games worse than Austin. The Orange will play Frisco, while the other playoff series’ can be seen here. Let’s take a look back at the regular season. Inside the Numbers 17-16 Frisco’s record after trading several top prospects for starting pitchers Gio Gonzalez, Justin Verlander and Jordan Zimmerman. (49-38 prior to trade) 77 Number of wins Calgary had, best in the CBL. Traverse City was the only other team to eclip...
