He defied them.

The 19-year-old Hickory right-hander spent eight innings working the corners, changing speeds and simply baffling Piedmont’s sizzling hitters in a 5-1 South Atlantic League victory.

“Aggressive pitching gets aggressive hitting out,” said Blaine Beatty, pitching coach for the Northern Division-leading Crawdads (10-3). “He’s got plus pitches — above major league average — and he went after people.”

It was a loss that planted the Weevils in second place (8-4). Although they entered play with a league-best .322 team batting average, they were limited to seven hits by Bradley (3-0), a Rubik’s Cube of a pitcher who has allowed one earned run and fanned 29 batters in 19 innings this spring.

“He didn’t leave us a lot of chances,” said Piedmont outfielder Marlon Byrd. “We got maybe one pitch to hit each at-bat, and we weren’t getting it tonight. When he did give us something, we didn’t capitalize.”

That’s because Bradley, a first-round draft pick out of West Palm Beach, kept the Weevils guessing. Blending two-seam and four-seam fastballs with an effective curve and change-up, he was fancy without being schmancy and steered clear of danger.

“He threw strikes. He threw it where he wanted to,” explained Piedmont manager Greg Legg. “You do that and don’t walk anybody, you’re gonna be successful.”

Piedmont’s most successful hitter was leadoff batter Jay Sitzman, who went 3-for-4. The Arizona native opened the bottom of the first inning with a bunt single, but was quickly erased on a double play. Bradley then found his groove and through five innings had faced the minimum 15 batters, thrown only 45 pitches and allowed only two balls to leave the infield.

“I think everybody was geared up, being aggressive and trying to hit him early in the count,” said Sitzman. “He’s a good control pitcher so we didn’t want to fall behind in the count. But we went after too many first and second pitches.”

Hickory built a 3-0 lead in the top of the third against Piedmont starter Frank Brooks (1-1). Errors by second-baseman Alex Rojas and Byrd made two of the runs unearned. The ‘Dads extended their lead in the fifth on a sacrifice fly by J.R. House and made it 5-0 in the sixth when Raleigh native Jeremy Cotton pumped a double to left field and scored on teammate Deivi Perez’s base hit.

The Weevils finally solved Bradley in the last of the seventh. Byrd led off with a triple to left-center, his second of the year and the team’s third. “He hung a curveball and I got it,” he said. “I’m sure it was a mistake because his curveball down was unhittable.”

Teammate Nate Espy delivered the Weevils’ run when he sliced an opposite-field single to right. “With a five-run lead (Bradley) was just gonna continue throwing strikes,” said the big first baseman. “He knew he had room to play with so he gave a fastball away and I took it to right field.”

Bradley finished with eight strikeouts, no walks and a few more admirers. “A guy like that is gonna make a minimum number of mistakes,” said Espy. “You’ve got to take advantage of them. We didn’t really hit tonight, but he had something to do with that.”

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