Maybe this story has already been written and I just haven’t seen it or maybe it's because he plays for the .500, 4th-place in the A.L. East, Baltimore Orioles but does it seem like not enough people are talking about the year Jonathan Schoop is having? Is it simply just that people are too enamored with what is going on with the rookie of the year candidates Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger that the 25-year-old second basemen of the O’s is just going overlooked? Well that train stops here.

To be honest, I only just realized how impressive his season has been while I was putting together some DFS lineups and I had to do a double take. I thought maybe I had been looking at the page of teammate Manny Machado, who over the last two seasons we have seen him average 100 runs, 35 home runs, 95 RBI and a .290 batting average but that was not the case, I was indeed looking at Jonathan Schoop. Through 110 games this season, Schoop is hitting .303 with 70 runs, 25 home runs, 82 RBI and an OPS of .906. In terms of positional rankings that places Schoop 4th in runs, 5th in hits (126), 4th in doubles (29), 1st in home runs, 1st in RBI, 6th in batting average, and 3rd in OPS among all second basemen in baseball this season. To simplify that, he ranks among the top-six in each statical category listed above at his position. Quite impressive for the 25-year-old who had a career year in 2016, which saw him hit .267 with 82 runs, 25 home runs, 82 RBI and an OPS of .752 while playing the entire 162-game schedule.

So what has caused this jump in production between last year and this year you may be wondering? Well lets take a look at some of his sabermetric stats. Schoop is hitting the ball harder this season, with a 34-percent hard contact rate. He is also hitting more fly balls this season at 37.5-percent. His line drive rate also increased to 20.6-percent while his ground ball rate decreased to 41.8-percent. Of course, with the increase in hard contact and fly balls his HR/FB rate has also increased to a career best 20.5-percent. Schoop is also sporting a career-best BABIP at .337 and walk-rate at 5.9-percent while his strikeout-rate has remained the same at 21.4-percent. Nothing here screams regression, and his increased walk-rate, while not a major leap, does show a more patient approach at the plate. This is leading to Schoop swinging at better pitches and, when he makes contact, it has been impactful as suggested by his .250 ISO, which again leads all second basemen and ranks him 25th overall in baseball; near the likes of Miguel Sano and Anthony Rizzo.

Schoop is projected to finish the season with 94 runs, 34 home runs, 110 RBI and a batting average hovering around .300.  These numbers are very reminiscent of what we tend to expect from Robinson Cano, who has been among the top second basemen for nearly a decade, and after a year like this from Schoop it is time we start talking about if he will fall into that category for the next decade to come.