Never mind that the South Atlantic League’s hottest team rallied for its sixth consecutive victory, a 6-2 come-from-behind win over Charleston (W.Va.). On this night it did everything the hard way. And that, according to designated hitter Jorge Padilla, is a wonderful sign.

“That game right there, I like very much,” he said after Piedmont (6-1) scored four unearned runs with two men out in the last of the seventh inning. “It was not easy. It made us work hard. We had to earn it. It makes us better to win a game like this.”

Indeed. The team with the unworldly .378 batting average didn’t collect another 15 hits, didn’t launch any monstrous home runs into the darkness and didn’t play hermetically-sealed defense. Yet once again, it prevailed.

“It’s hard to keep that pace up,” said catcher Russ Jacobson. “You can’t get 10 hits, 15 hits a night. But you do what you can to win.”

Jacobson did his part, slicing a two-run double to right-center field that gave the Weevils a 3-2 seventh-inning lead against hard-luck loser Ryan Baerlocher. Teammate Alex Rojas, Piedmont’s ninth-place hitter, sealed the deal moments later when he drilled a two-run single off reliever Raul Garcia.

“It seemed a lot closer than 6-2,” said Piedmont manager Greg Legg. “They played right with us. We got the big two-out hits and took advantage of the one mistake they made. That was the difference.”

Baerlocher (0-1), a 6-5 craftsman, blended a sneaky-quick fastball with a parachute change-up to hold the Weevils at bay through four innings. “He pitched well enough to win,” said Jacobson. “Against someone like him, you have to make adjustments. You have to be patient and wait for a good pitch to hit.”

Baerlocher was matched zero for zero by Piedmont left-hander Frank Brooks, a Brooklyn native drafted last June out of St. Peter’s (NJ) College. The Weevils gave him a 1-0 lead to work with in the last of the fifth when Nate Espy walked, advanced to second on Padilla’s infield hit and scored on a double play.

Charleston (1-6) tied the score in the sixth when light-hitting Greg Raymundo pulled a low, inside curveball from Brooks over the left-field wall.

“He brought out his sand wedge for that one,” the southpaw joked after yielding three hits in 6 1/3 innings. “I don’t know how he got it. I wanted to put one in the dirt, then come back with a fastball outside. But he hit the one in the dirt. Russ was on his knees ready to block it.”

Brooks ran into more trouble in the seventh when Charleston’s Brian Johnson reached on a lost-in-the-lights double to shallow left, then moved to third base on a sacrifice bunt.

Legg, sensing danger, promptly summoned relief pitcher Justin Fry, who promptly surrendered a run-scoring single to the Alley Cats’ Charlie Ramirez.

“I hated to take (Brooks) out,” the first-year boss reported. “But I had the ultimate confidence in Fry to come in and get a strikeout or ground ball.”

Fry (1-0) rebounded to retire eight of the last nine batters he faced — including five on strikeouts. Those clutch hits by Jacobson and Rojas in the seventh made him a winning pitcher.

“I was just throwing strikes,” said Fry, now 5-0 as a professional. “Getting ahead 1-and-2, oh-and-2, that’s a great advantage. Coach Legger told me to go right after them and that’s what I tried to do.”