Ryan Romano: Schoop improves his situational plate discipline

If you've watched the Orioles on MASN recently, you've likely seen the ad featuring Jonathan Schoop. The announcer provides the denotations for a number of words like "fluke" and "luck," interspersed between clips of the second baseman's more impressive plays, before bragging about some element of his performance. These doubts have always seemed to haunt Schoop, which is why his apparent breakout in 2016 feels so sweet. Through, Schoop had hit .302/.335/.515, by far the best line of his career. The longer this goes on, the less the jeers of "luck" will pester Schoop.

Heading into 2016, Schoop had one glaring weakness: the strikeout. In his first two years with the Orioles, he went down on strikes in 25.1 percent of his plate appearances, one of the highest marks in the major leagues. He appeared to improve upon that this spring training, when he struck out a mere seven times in 66 plate appearances; of course, as Hyun Soo Kim will happily tell you, spring training results don't always carry over into the regular season. It's thus been encouraging to see Schoop reduce his Ks into the summer - he's tallied a 20.4 percent strikeout rate to this point, which is better than the major league average. Putting the ball in play more often has helped to pump up Schoop's batting line and played a large role in making him a formidable hitter.

Here, though, the familiar uncertainty kicks in. According to Baseball-Reference.com, Schoop has swung and missed at 17.4 percent of the pitches he's seen in 2016. That's actually higher than in the prior two years, when he notched a 16.3 percent swinging strike rate. Looking over Schoop's whiff rates, you start to hear those words again. If he comes up empty that often, why hasn't he struck out? Is he just lucky?

Not necessarily. Schoop has made significant progress in his situational plate discipline, which his overall numbers belie. In 2014 and 2015, he swung and missed a lot more often with two strikes in the count (22 percent) than he did with zero or one strike (14 percent). The former was the third-highest clip in the majors, while the latter placed a slightly more respectable 18th. This year, he's improved his two-strike whiff rate to 18.1 percent, slotting him 35th in baseball; simultaneously, he's whiffed at 17.1 percent of the no- or one-strike pitches he's seen, which ranks fourth.

What does this mean in simpler terms? Schoop has become more aggressive early, and it's paid off as a whole - he's hit three first-pitch home runs this season, as well as six longballs on the second pitch. With that aggression, predictably, has come the spike in whiffs. But later in the count, Schoop has protected, refusing to give in until he finds a pitch to hit. It's a welcome development for the former hacker, and a familiar one, too.

In his nine-season Orioles career, Adam Jones ranks 39th among qualified hitters in whiff rate - and 228th in strikeout rate. How has he pulled that off? By getting (comparatively) better in deeper counts. Over that same span, Jones has posted a 13.9 percent swinging strike rate before getting to two strikes and a 16.3 percent swinging-strike rate thereafter. Like Schoop, has learned to do in the present campaign, Jones has stayed alive long enough to put the ball in play and avoid the strikeout.

Jones and Schoop resemble each other in another area: They're both aggressive in the strike zone. Jones ranks 17th in the majors with a 72.6 percent Z-Swing rate since 2008. After a spring training in which he said he was "swinging at more strikes," Schoop has surpassed that, placing second with an 80.5 percent Z-Swing rate (although, in fairness, Jones is first at 82.4 percent). This means that they each dodge called strikes - and called strikeouts - and can thus maintain a high-whiff/low-K combination.

Last night against the Yankees, Schoop turned on a 2-1 heater and walloped it into the bullpen in left-center. While it couldn't grant the Orioles a victory, Schoop's 16th home run of the year was still an encouraging sign from an improving player. The 25-year-old has cut down on his strikeouts, and deservedly so; if he keeps this up, MASN won't need to run that ad for much longer.

Ryan Romano blogs about the Orioles for Camden Depot. Follow the blog on Twitter: @CamdenDepot. His thoughts on the O's appear here as part of MASNsports.com's continuing commitment to welcome guest bloggers to our little corner of cyberspace. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.