AZUSA, Calif. -- Andrew Shive, winner of 7 straight relief decisions for the Class A Short-Season Staten Island Yankees, will represent the American League in tonight’s New York-Penn League All-Star Game in Troy, N.Y. Shive is 1 of 6 representatives from the New York Yankees affiliate, and is 1 of 3 pitchers from a pitching staff that owns the league’s second-best earned-run average.

“It’s pretty exciting,” said Shive, the Cougars’ opening-game playoff starter at each level of NAIA postseason play (regional, super regional and NAIA World Series). “I’ve just been trying to do what I did in college – compete and get guys out. Along the way, they’ve put me into situations where I’ve gotten the opportuniy to get some wins.”

Shive is 7-2 with a 2.25 ERA on the season, making all but one of his 18 appearances in relief. In 36 innings of work, he has 40 strikeouts while issuing just 10 walks and holding opponents to a .268 batting average. After surrendering runs in 3 of his first 4 professional appearances, Shive picked up 4 wins in 5 appearances over a 3-week stretch to start the month of July. Since June 27, he is 7-0 with a 1.55 ERA, giving up just 6 runs (5 earned) on 26 hits and notching 33 strikeouts in 29 innings of work.

“My team has some other guys who deserve to be here ahead of me,” said Shive, noting the 0.50 ERA posted by fellow relief ace Brad Rulon.

The 6-foot-6, 260-pound righthander from Bakersfield, Calif. learned of his All-Star selection the day after a 4-inning outing in which he surrendered just one hit and struck out a pair to pick up his seventh win of the season in a 1-0 win Aug. 11 over Williamsport, a Philadelphia Phillies affiliate.

“We were playing in State College (Pa.), and our starting pitcher for that night’s game came down to the bullpen to tell those of us who had made the team,” said Shive, a 35th-round selection in the 2008 Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft. “I didn’t believe him until after the game when I picked up text messages from family and friends congratulating me. It was unreal.”

Shive isn’t the only former Cougar making a name for himself in the professional ranks. Four-time NAIA All-American Stephen Vogt, a 2007 12th-round selection of the Tampa Bay Rays, hit home runs in back-to-back games for the first official time in his professional career, including a 10th-inning walk-off solo shot that gave the Rays’ Class A South Atlantic League Columbus Catfish a 5-4 win Monday night and pulled them to within 4-and-a-half games of first-place Augusta in the Southern Division standings.

“The situation couldn’t have been more perfect - my parents were in town, and I was catching and it was our team’s second extra-inning game this week,” said Vogt, who helped extend the team’s winning streak to 4 games. “Hitting a walkoff in pressure baseball is one of the greatest feelings ever, and it was especially satisfying as I hit home plate, just sharing the moment with teammates who are excited to win baseball games.”

Vogt overcame a slow start to his second professional season, entering the South Atlantic League All-Star break in mid-June batting just .208 with 1 home run and 16 RBIs. His early-season slump seemed to hit bottom at the break, as he entered the 4-day layoff hitless in his last 10 at-bats and mired in a 6-for-37 slump (.162 average). Vogt singled in each of his first 2 games following the time off, and on June 27, his first 3-hit game of the season marked the beginning of an offensive explosion from the 6-foot-3 catcher/outfielder.

“The first half of the season was a nightmare – it was the worst baseball I had ever played in my life,” said Vogt. “I was down in a rut, and I couldn’t get out of it. At the All-Star break, I had a couple friends visit me, and my wife called me out a little bit for letting the situation keep me down.”

“That helped me go into the second half with a new focus. I came to the ballpark with an attitude that today was going to be the day that I busted out of it. If you’re going to have success at this level, you have to think you’re going to have a great day every day.”

Vogt reached base safely in 19 straight games from June 25 to July 20, and he was 8-for-17 in a 4-game series to Houston Astros affiliate Lexington, hitting just his second home run since April 4 during the series. That series sparked a 10-game stretch in which he batted .476 (20-for-42).

“The biggest adjustment has been learning how to hit professional pitching every day,” said Vogt. “I know it’s a cliché, but it truly is a marathon, not a sprint. You really have to work to keep from getting too high or too low, because you face great pitching every night.”

Since June 27, Vogt has collected 16 multi-hit games, including 7 3-hit performances, batting .373 (59-for-158) with 8 doubles, 5 home runs, 31 RBIs, 22 runs, 16 walks. Vogt was 8-for-15 in the first 3 games of a scheduled 4-game series at the end of July with San Francisco Giants affiliate Augusta, but the season series finale was suspended in the third inning due to rain on Aug. 1, rendering unofficial what would have been Vogt’s first career grand slam, and first back-to-back games with home runs.

Shive and Vogt are joined in affiliated professional baseball by 4 other former Azusa Pacific players.

Scott Hodsdon, a 2007 sixth-round draft choice of the Oakland Athletics, is spending his second professional campaign in the starting rotation for the Kane County Cougars, Oakland’s Class A Midwest League affiliate in the suburbs of Chicago, Ill. The 6-foot-1 right-hander is 5-8 with a 3.06 ERA on the season, and he, too, rebounded from a slow start to the campaign.

After dropping 4 straight decisions with a 6.75 ERA in 5 April starts, Hodsdon bounced back with a perfect 3-0 mark in May to go with a 1.74 ERA and a 23:4 strikeouts-to-walks ratio in 31 innings of work. Hodsdon was sidelined for 3 weeks at the end of July, but in 4 appearances since his return, he has given up just 1 run on 7 hits in 14 innings.

Outfielder Kirk Nieuwenhuis, the 2008 third-round draft choice of the New York Mets, is batting .300 (65-for-217) following his fourth consecutive multi-hit game for the Brooklyn Cyclones, the Mets’ Short-Season Class A New York-Penn League affiliate. Nieuwenhuis is 11-for-18 (.611) in the past 4 games, and his seventh-inning solo shot Sunday pulled the Cyclones to within a run in a game they went on to win in 10 innings, 6-5, over Houston Astros affiliate Tri-City.

Since July 30, Nieuwenuhis is batting .380 (30-for-79) with 12 runs, 12 RBIs, along with 9 of his 15 extra-base hits this season, and he has registered 10 multi-hit games in the 18-game stretch. His first collegiate hit came off former Azusa Pacific teammate Shive, in both players’ professional debuts. The pair have faced each other in 3 games this season, with Nieuwenhuis going 3-for-4 with a triple and a strikeout against Shive.

Jonny Bravo, a 23rd-round pick of the St. Louis Cardinals earlier this year, has proven to be an effective relief weapon for Johnson City, the Cardinals’ Rookie-level Appalachian League affiliate. The 5-foot-7 southpaw is 1-3 with 1 save, registering a 2.81 ERA with 44 strikeouts in 32 innings of work. In 7 games of relief work, Bravo has posted a 1.09 ERA, striking out 34 in 24.2 innings, and left-handed hitters are batting just .130 off him this season.

Brandon Sisk, a left-handed pitcher for the Cougars for 3 seasons from 2004-06, opened the year with the Bay Area Toros of the professional independent Continental Baseball League, then signed a free-agent contract with the Kansas City Royals July 4. Sisk opened his affiliated career with the Royals’ Rookie-level Pioneer League affiliate Idaho Falls Chukars, where he registered a 2.45 ERA in 4 appearances before earning a promotion to the Burlington Bees in the Class A Midwest League.

In 6 games with Burlington, the 6-foot-3 southpaw is 1-1 with a 1.80 ERA, striking out 24 batters in 15 innings. After striking out 6 in 3.1 innings of relief and earning the win in Sunday’s 4-2 win over Cardinals affiliate Quad Cities, Sisk ran his scoreless innings streak to 11.1, a stretch that includes 19 strikeouts.