Hot Tots Begin Roster Build With Returners
From the moment the 2025 season ended, Minot Hot Tots field manager Brian Lewis and staff have been hard at work chiseling out the player roster for the upcoming summer. Now that Opening Day is a few short months away, the roster has started to take shape. Anchoring the 2026 lineup are two returners from the most recent season and a new addition with a Hot Tot connection.
Cade Dickinson, Right-Handed Pitcher, Northern Oklahoma College-Tonkawa
The roster starts taking shape with a right-handed arm from Oklahoma. Cade Dickinson is in his second year of junior college baseball at Northern Oklahoma-Tonkawa, a prestigious NJCAA Region 2 program. While Dickinson has yet to appear in a game for the Mavericks, he does know a thing or two about Corbett Field.
A second-half addition for Brian Lewis’ ballclub, Dickinson was a dynamic piece to Minot’s pitching puzzle. Five of his seven Northwoods League appearances were out of the bullpen, where he was helpful in eating up the middle innings. On the summer, Dickinson would toss 21.1 innings with an 8.44 ERA and eight strikeouts.
Pitching is a great place to start when building for the new season and a returner like Dickinson is a great arm to add first.
Christian Stratis, Outfielder, The Citadel
They call a season in the Northwoods League “the grind”. There are only a select few that fully embrace it and suit up for an entire summer. Christian Stratis is one of them and willing to do it again. After appearing on the lineup card 58 times for the Hot Tots last season, Stratis is on his way back to Corbett Field.
While playing the second-most games of any Hot Tot in history, Stratis kept up a .251 batting average and .341 on-base percentage. His hustle was on display as well, recording 12 extra-base hits and scoring 27 runs. Defensively, Stratis fit in as the Hot Tots’ primary left fielder while occasionally playing third base. He is signed to a full-season contract for 2026, continuing to show he bleeds Hot Tot red, gold and blue and is all about “the grind”
The upcoming spring season will be a change of scenery for Stratis and he begins his first year with The Citadel Bulldogs. It is a move much closer to home for the Hilton Head, South Carolina native, who will now play his home games in nearby Charleston. The Citadel is a Division I mid-major program in the Southern Conference. Coming up this summer, The Citadel won’t just have one representative in Minot, they’ll have two.
Sam Dansky, Infielder, The Citadel
Also hailing from The Citadel, Sam Dansky is set to make his Minot Hot Tots debut come summer. Dansky is entering his first year at the Division I level after transferring in from Gaston College of the NJCAA. Before transferring, Dansky spent one season on the field for the Gaston Rhinos, and impressed. He hit .307 with a .941 OPS in 57 games. The shortstop from Charlotte can do it all with the bat, tallying 17 extra-base hits last spring with seven clearing the fences for home runs.
Dansky does have summer-ball experience going back to 2024. In that season he played for the High Point-Thomasville HiToms of the Coastal Plain League, appearing in 22 games.
He and Stratis will both be heading from the Atlantic shores to the far north this summer, establishing the left side of Hot Tot defense and top of the batting order.
