A look at Schoop's longest home runs as O's play final series before trade deadline

Jonathan Schoop took a swing and blasted another baseball. This one carried well over the fence for a homer to produce the only Orioles run in a 5-1 loss Wednesday at Tampa Bay.

The season of Schoop continues. The 25-year-old from Curacao who often tells reporters how much he just "wants to get better" continues to do just that.

Schoop is now three homers from his career high set last year of 25 and 10 RBIs from a career high of 82, also established last season. Through 99 games, he is batting .303/.349/.550 with an OPS of .898. He has 26 doubles, 22 homers and 72 RBIs. If we don't count a season in 2013, when he had just 15 plate appearances, Schoop is well on his way to career bests in all four categories, which previously was a batting average of .279, a .306 OBP, a slugging percentage of .482 and a .788 OPS.

Schoop is on a pace to finish with 42 doubles, 35 homers and 115 RBIs. After chasing 43.9 percent of pitches outside of the strike zone per FanGraphs stats in 2015 and 43 percent last year, Schoop has chased a career-low 36.1 percent this year.

The homer he blasted Wednesday was his third-longest homer of this year:
* 462 feet, July 8 at Minnesota
* 454 feet, June 9 at Yankee Stadium
* 440 feet, July 26 at Tampa Bay
* 425 feet, June at Oriole Park versus Cleveland
* 423 feet, June 6 at Oriole Park versus Pittsburgh

Schoop has an RBI in nine of his past 10 games. In that span he is 15-for-41 (.366) with four homers and 18 RBIs.

As the Orioles move on to Texas for a weekend series that starts tonight, maybe Schoop will have another big series against the Rangers. In the four-game series last week in Baltimore, Schoop went 7-for-16 against Rangers pitching with two doubles, a homer and nine RBIs.

The Orioles swept four games from Texas at Oriole Park by scores of 3-1, 12-1, 10-2 and 9-7. They got quality starts in the first three games of that series, as Chris Tillman, Dylan Bundy and Kevin Gausman combined to allow three runs over 18 innings. In the series finale, Wade Miley gave up five runs over five innings, but the offense produced nine runs in a win.

The Orioles have played 10 games since the start of that Texas series at Camden Yards on July 17. They have gotten five quality starts in that span with a combined ERA of 1.88. They have five games in this stretch without a quality start and the ERA in those contests is 8.67.

The clock is ticking on the non-waiver trade deadline, which is coming at 4 p.m. on Monday. This will be the last series the Orioles play before the deadline.

How many wins do we see this weekend? How many trades?