Random notes and a take on Jonathan Schoop

Sunday's win by the Orioles over the Los Angeles Angels by an 8-2 score ended a few losing streaks for the club. It ended their seven-game losing streak, which was their fourth this year of seven or more games. It ended their 0-5 record this season and seven-game losing streak dating to last season against the Angels. It ended a 17-game losing streak versus American League teams dating to May 25. It ended their 0-15 run this year against AL West teams.

So they put a few negative streaks to rest heading into an off day. The eight runs they scored was three more than their three previous games combined. They have scored eight or more nine times in the 2018 season.

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Some pertinent and some useless facts: Sunday's game was fast. It took just two hours and 29 minutes to play. I wondered if it was the fastest game this year? Nope. There have been seven games faster than that one. Two Orioles games have lasted just two hours and 21 minutes this year to tie for the fastest of 2018. They were both in a three-day span early in the year and both against Cleveland at Oriole Park. On April 21 the O's lost 4-0 and on April 23 they lost 2-1 to the Indians. Both games took 2:21 to complete.

The Orioles tied their season-high in hitting four homers on Sunday. They had done that twice before - on April 6 at Yankee Stadium and at home on May 11 versus Tampa Bay.

Kevin Gausman's eight-inning outing Sunday was the fifth time this year a Baltimore starter went eight or more innings. Gausman has now done it three times. He went eight on April 23 at Cleveland and he went nine scoreless May 5 at Oakland in a game the Orioles lost 2-0 in 12 innings. Dylan Bundy went a complete-game nine innings with 14 strikeouts May 24 at Chicago versus the White Sox and went eight scoreless on June 11 versus Boston.

The Orioles bullpen did not allow a run Sunday for the first time since June 20 at Washington. The entire 'pen performance consisted of a one-inning outing in the ninth by Miguel Castro. That ended a run of 10 straight games where the Orioles bullpen was scored on and had pitched to an ERA of 5.66 in that span.

The Orioles scored six runs in the fourth inning yesterday. That is more runs than they have scored in 64 games this year.

The Orioles' six-run win margin Sunday was their second biggest of the year. It will be hard to top their 17-1 win over Tampa Bay on May 13. But Sunday was their fourth win by six runs to tie for second-best of this year. On April 27 they beat Detroit 6-0. May 24 at Chicago, they beat the White Sox 9-3 and June 17 they whipped Miami 10-4.

The scoop on Schoop: Second baseman Jonathan Schoop entered yesterday's game for defense in the ninth inning but he didn't bat. Schoop is the second Oriole, following Chris Davis, to get a "reset."

It's the O's version of a do-over or fresh start of sorts. Schoop was the Most Valuable Oriole last year when he hit .293/.338/.503 with 35 doubles, 32 homers and 105 RBIs. Schoop made his first All-Star team in the 2017 season and he had 51 RBIs after the All-Star break. His 67 extra-base hits ranked 12th in the AL and he was the fastest Oriole to 100 RBIs since Davis in 2013. It was a breakout season.

But now the 26-year-old Schoop is batting .197/.242/.345 and his OPS, which was .841 last year is now .587. His OPS+ dropped from 123 to 62. Schoop is 2-for-27 his last seven games, hit just .144 in June and is batting only .161 with runners in scoring position.

What is going on with Johnny baseball?

Is this bad karma since Schoop skipped FanFest? Is he sulking and worried about likely soon watching his good buddy Manny Machado head to another team? Is he not the player we thought he was?

It could be any or all of the above but to me it's not likely that. Schoop is not being pitched very differently than last year, at least in terms of pitch mix. His walk and strikeout rates are not very different from 2017.

Sometimes a hitter just gets in an extended rut and can't get out of it. No doubt Schoop feels some pressure to perform as well as he did last year and the losing has worn on everyone so it must be impacting him too.

In some respects, all the Davis criticism has taken some of the spotlight off of Schoop and his struggles. Manager Buck Showalter said this of his second baseman: "You have to change the way you look at results. If you look up at the scoreboard and are hitting .198, that will all take care of itself if you stay in the pitch, the at-bat. How do you define a good result? When you are taking a walk? That is hard to do when you are trying to hit .290 or .300 and you're hitting .190. Does it involve turning a great double play? Does it involve hitting a line drive that the second baseman catches? Does it involve laying off pitches out of the zone? Depends how you define it."

Showalter wanted to remind Schoop that he just needed to start having better at-bats. Hitting a line drive would show more progress than a bloop that fell in, even though the latter at-bat would help his batting average.

Maybe Schoop just needs to realize there is still about a half-season yet to play. He has plenty of games to make up for lost time and show us all that he is the player we thought he was after the 2017 season.

Can he do it?