The Northwest League announced it’s All Star roster on July 26^th and three Hillsboro Hops made it to the contest. All Hops are pitchers. They are Jake Winston, Tyler Mark and Tommy Eveld.

The game will take place on August 2^nd, in Ogden, Utah. For the second year in a row, the All Stars of the Northwest League will face the All Stars of the Pioneer league.

Jake Winston is leading the Hops in saves this year. He has appeared in seventeen games and has saved three with an ERA of 1.80. Jake originally comes from Vidalia, Louisiana and went to school at Southern Mississippi. He was drafted in the 17^th round of the 2016 draft on the 14^th of June. He was assigned to the Missoula Osprey the following day and immediately promoted to the Hillsboro Hops on the 16^th, one day later. The 6’3” right-hander is considered the 35^th top prospect of the 2016 class and the 10^th highest rated coming out of the Conference USA. An avid duck hunter and lover of the outdoors, Jake recently did a six mile hike in Yellowstone National Park.

Tyler Mark is from Los Angeles, California and went to Culver City (CA) High School and Concordia (CA) College. He was drafted in the 6^th round of the 2015 draft by Arizona. He is one of the returning players from last year’s championship squad. The 6’1” right hander is leading the Hops with four wins and counting on the season. The 22-year-old Mark has struck out 52 batters so far in only 51.2 innings. Tyler is a huge fan of the Batman.

Tommy Eveld hails from Coral Springs, Florida and the University of South Florida. The 6’5” right hander was drafted in the ninth round of the 2016 draft by the Arizona Diamondbacks. He was signed on June 13^th and assigned to the Hillsboro Hops on the 15^th. Eveld has struck out 17 in only 16.1 innings. Eveld was also known as a football player, more specifically a wide receiver in college and a quarterback in high school. Tommy passed for 2300 yards in high school. After high school, Eveld chose to walk on at USF where his older brother was the back up quarterback. Tommy switched to wide receiver before blowing out his ACL. He came back to baseball after two major ACL surgeries eventually replacing his torn ACL with one from a cadaver. Before then, he last played on the baseball diamond in the 10^th grade. His fastball has been clocked in the upper 90s.

Other All Stars representing their teams include Xavier Turner, third base, from the Spokane Indians. Turner is currently leading the league with a .340 batting average. Seth Spivey, a catcher from the Indians and Eric Filia, an outfielder from the Everett Aquasox will appear and are currently leading the league with 30 RBIs.

Pitchers include Javier Medina of the Boise Hawks who is leading the league with 5 wins, Emmanuel Ramirez of the Tri City Hawks who is leading the league with a .262 ERA and the Hillsboro Hops Tyler Mark who is leading the league with 52 strike outs.

Also of note is the Vancouver Canadians Cavan Biggio, whose father is Hall of Famer Craig Biggio. Cavan, so far this season, is batting .279 with 14 RBIs while playing second base like his father.

By Greg Stoker
@GDStoker