CHARLOTTE – Charlotte Baseball hosts fellow Charlotte-based school, Queens, on Tuesday evening (March 24) at Hayes Stadium in a midweek matchup to kick off a four-game homestand for the Green and White.
 
First pitch in the first-ever meeting on the baseball diamond between the Niners (15-9, 1-2 American) and Royals (6-17, 2-4 ASUN) is scheduled for 6 p.m. and will stream live on ESPN+.
 
SEASON-LONG PROMOTIONS
Tuesday: $2 Tuesdays – Enjoy $2 hot dogs at every Tuesday home game at The Hayes this season!
 
THE SERIES WITH QUEENS
– Tuesday is the first-ever meeting on the diamond between the two Charlotte programs.
– Queens is the fourth new opponent the Niners are playing in baseball for the first time this year, joining San Diego, Wright State, and Maine.
– Queens will be the sixth current member of the Atlantic Sun Conference that Charlotte has played. Other teams in the ASUN that the Green and White have already played include Austin Peay, Jacksonville, Lipscomb, North Florida, and West Georgia.
– With the Royals playing their games at The Stick Williams Dream Fields, this marks the closest battle of home stadiums in program history, with only 12.89 miles separating Queens’ home field and The Hayes.
 
SCOUTING THE ROYALS
– Queens enters Tuesday with a 6-17 record on the year and a 2-4 mark in conference play.
– The Royals won their second series of the season this past weekend after taking the final two games against Jacksonville. The win on Saturday snapped a 13-game losing streak for Queens, with its last win before this weekend coming on Feb. 25 at South Carolina.
– Queens has struggled in the power department this year, entering Tuesday slugging .339 to rank 282nd in the country. The Royals move runners around in other ways, laying down 16 sacrifice bunts to tie for the 25th most in the nation.
– Grayson Childers has been the brightest spot in the lineup for Queens, leading the team in nearly every offensive category. He leads the team with a .321 average, 18 hits, 17 walks, five doubles, and four home runs.
– Joey Ruller leads Queens’s pitching staff with 30 strikeouts and 37.1 innings of action. Owen Shipman and Jake Young have been the most-used arms out of the bullpen, each throwing 13.2 innings in relief entering Tuesday.
 
LAST TIME OUT
Charlotte opened up American Conference play this past weekend with a series in Wichita. The Niners won the middle game of the series, 19-6, but dropped the bookends of the weekend, 8-3, and 7-2, for the Shockers to take the series.
 
HIT PARADE
The Niners mashed 24 hits for the 19 runs in Saturday’s win for the most hits since 2022, and just five shy of matching the record of 29 hits in a 2008 victory over UMass. Alec DeMartino, Cody Gunderson, Adrian Jimenez, Dylan Koontz, and Cale Stricklin combined for 20 of the 24 hits as all five recorded four knocks in the game. The 19 runs are also a season high and the most since Charlotte scored 20 at Tulane in the final weekend of last season.
 
BETTER THAN WENDY’S
One-upping a four-for-four, CLT’s day having five-for-four hits marked the most hits in a game since a 29-4 win over Western Illinois in 2022. Stricklin and Koontz both homered multiple times in the game while DeMartino tripled and Gunderson, Jimenez, and Stricklin all doubled for the team to hit for the cycle. It is believed to be the first time in program history that the 49ers have had five different players record at least four hits in the same game.
 
ANOTHER 9-RBI PERFORMANCE
Just two weeks after DeMartino set the program record with nine RBIs at Campbell, Stricklin equaled the feat in Saturday’s win. A double and a two-run single brought the first three home before he hit a grand slam and a two-run home run to cap his record-tying day. Charlotte’s previous record of 8 RBIs in a single game was established by Alex Saylors in 1986 and equaled five times – most recently by All-American Cam Fisher in 2022 – before the two games of nine RBIs this year.
 
DOUBLE THE HOMERS, DOUBLE THE FUN
After not having a Niner leave the yard twice in the same game at all last year, Charlotte already has four multi-homer performances this year. Stricklin and Koontz are the latest to do so after DeMartino hit a pair to set the single-game RBI record, and Gunderson hit a pair out against San Diego on Opening Day.
 
EXTRA RARE
Only nine players in the country have recorded 9 RBIs in a single game this year and Stricklin and DeMartino are the only two set of teammates to accomplish the feat this season. Looking at just the history of the American Conference, DeMartino and Stricklin are one of just three players in conference history to drive in at least nine runs in a single game and are tied for second behind an 11-RBI game from Hunter Goodman of Memphis against Western Illinois in 2020.
 
STRICKLIN THE SLUGGER
Entering the weekend without a home run in his collegiate career, Stricklin mashed two of them, including a grand slam for his first college homer. He led the team with 11 hits and 12 RBIs in five games last week, batting a team-best .579 while slugging .947 with an OPS of 1.538. In the series against the Shockers alone, Stricklin had 10 RBIs and a 1.182 slugging percentage for a 1.682 OPS.
 
ISN’T IT GRAND?
Stricklin’s grand slam was the fifth of the season for the 49ers, the most grannies hit in a single season since what is believed to be a program-record 10 grand slams during the 2022 season. Koontz had the first one of the year with a walk-off grand slam to win via the run rule against San Diego over Opening Weekend and then hit another one in a midweek shutout of No. 11 Virginia. DeMartino hit one as part of his 9-RBI game at Campbell and Todd Hudson added one in the midweek at South Carolina leading up to the Wichita State weekend.
 
PRODUCTION FROM TOP TO BOTTOM
The grand slam was the first home run of the season and of his career for Stricklin, meaning all nine primary starters have left the yard at least once this year. The Green and White have three games this year where every player in the starting lineup has recorded a hit and all nine starters have recorded multiple multi-hit games and at least one multi-RBI game. All nine are batting over .275 on the year, with eight players sitting above the .300 mark, led by Gunderson’s average of .358.
 
MENTIONED HONORABLY
Stricklin’s big week was enough to earn him an Honorable Mention nod in the American Conference weekly awards. He’s the fifth 49er to notch an Honorable Mention this year, joining Joseph Taylor, Koontz, Spencer Nolan, and Dawson Bryce.
 
KOONTZ KRUSHED IT TOO
Lost in the shuffle of Stricklin’s monster game on Saturday, Koontz also turned in a career performance with a career-high six RBIs on his four hits. He mashed two home runs in the game, including a 466-foot blast to center field for the longest home run hit by a Niner this year. Koontz tied for the team lead with seven hits in Wichita, including four extra-base knocks to slug 1.071 on the weekend.
 
NATIONALLY-RECOGNIZED PERFORMANCES
Both Stricklin and Koontz turned in two of the best hitting performances in the country on Saturday, with both being mentioned in D1Baseball’s Top 30 Hitting Performances of March 21. Stricklin’s record-tying day was tabbed as the second-best performance at the plate that day, while Koontz clocked in at No. 17.
 
THE BIG 200
Head Coach Robert Woodard is closing in on his 200th win leading the 49ers, entering the season with 181 career victories leading the 9 Across The Chest. He was the fastest coach in program history to reach 100 wins, accomplishing the feat during the 2023 season in his 166th game as skipper. Now sitting with 196 wins, Woodard could enter the 200-win club as early as this weekend with a midweek win and a sweep of South Florida.
 
MAKING THEM MISS
Charlotte’s MO of striking out batters has continued in 2026, sitting second in the American Conference with 242 strikeouts this year. The total strikeouts are tied for the 30th-most Ks in the country and the team’s K/9 of 10.6 ranks 32nd and would be a program record if it holds. Extrapolating to the whole year, Charlotte is on pace for 554 strikeouts by the end of the regular season, which would be the fifth-most in a single season in program history.
 
GET TO SIX OR HOLD THEM TO FIVE
The Niners are 13-2 when scoring at least six runs in a game and 11-1 when holding the opponent to five or fewer runs. In a similar vein, CLT is 14-2 when at least equaling the hit total of the opponent, but is 1-7 when being outhit.
 
SAYING HELLO AT THE HAYES
The Green and White opened their first two weekends of the season at home against debut opponents and did that in the initial home midweek game of the year as well. After battling San Diego and Wright State on the diamond for the first time in program history, Maine visited the Hayes in week three for the inaugural matchup between the 49ers and Black Bears in baseball – meaning every opponent at The Hayes in February was playing their first game against the Niners. Another new opponent comes to town this week with the first-ever meeting on the Diamond against Queens. With The Stick Williams Dream Fields located only 12.89 miles from The Hayes, it’s the shortest distance between The Hayes and an opponent’s home stadium in program history.