Bradford and Company Strikeout the Tourists 12-1

ASHEVILLE- Yes, the Hickory Crawdads scored 12 runs. Yes, the Crawdads pounded out 20 hits. Yes, the visiting team’s offense hit five Home Runs. No, none of those were the highlight performance for Asheville’s opponents on Thursday night. The real story was Hickory’s starting pitcher, Cody Bradford, who helped hand the Tourists a 12-1 loss.

Bradford was incredible. The lefty pitched six innings and scattered five hits. One of those hits was a solo Home Run by Asheville’s first-baseman Alex Holderbach. On paper those numbers look like a quality start, maybe a little better. The number that jumps out for Bradford is 14. That is how many strikeouts Bradford recorded in his six innings of work. He is only the fourth pitcher in professional baseball this season to strikeout 14 or more in a game. One of those four is Jacob deGrom who struck out 15 across nine innings back in April.

Hickory’s relievers, Sean Chandler and Jean Casanova, continued the strikeout barrage with seven over the final three innings. Asheville struck out 21 times in the game.

Shay Whitcomb did record an infield single to extend his hitting streak to 12 games, which is now tied for the longest hit streak by a Tourists player this season. Jose Bravo pitched three innings in relief and limited the red-hot Crawdads offense to only one run.

Asheville has been outscored 40-7 over the first three games of this six-game series. The Tourists will attempt to right the ship on Friday night with game four set to begin at 6:35pm.