Baltimore Orioles second baseman Jonathan Schoop had a monster of a game in the victory over the St. Louis Cardinals. He drove in four runs, on two home runs and four hits in five at-bats.
Before this victory, Baltimore had lost eight of their last nine games. This stretch was one of the toughest in recent memory, having to play against the NL East-leading Washington Nationals, resurgent Chicago White Sox and the AL East-leading New York Yankees.
In addition, Schoop hadn’t homered since June 1st, making this game all of the more special for him. After the game, Schoop spoke about the difficulty of the stretch that they just had endured.
“It’s difficult, but you gotta press through it,” said Schoop. “That’s how you play baseball. You have good times, you have bad times, you’ve gotta minimize the bad times. We try and do that, we try to get better and we try to win more games.”
He was also asked about how good that win felt after being on the other side of lopsided victories.
“It was really good… a really good feeling. We’ve been doing it for four years already (Schoop came into the league in 2013). It’s really good. When you win, it’s a really good feeling and we want to do it more. We want to get better and try to win more games.”
Adam Wainwright was his opponent and it was his first time facing him. Usually Wainwright has a very steady hand as a pitcher. Today was different. Schoop got the best of him.
“This was my first time facing him,” Schoop said of Wainwright. “I’ve watched him pitch, he’s a really good pitcher and we came today, he made a couple of mistakes and we made him pay for it.”
On if this win could bring the team some future momentum:
“This team, you know we really believe in each other. Even when we lose, we believe we’re going to break out of that. Today was a good win for us and hopefully we can keep it up for tomorrow and for the whole season.”
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