Guardians Should Be Encouraged With Steven Kwan’s Recent Stretch

At this point in the season, it’s no secret that Steven Kwan hasn’t looked himself over the last few months. Even going back to the final weeks of the 2025 campaign, the one-time Cleveland Guardians All-Star hasn’t resembled the elite leadoff hitter he once was.

In fact, the Guardians even moved Kwan out of that top spot in the lineup and bumped him down to seventh with the hope that more lower-leverage situations would take some pressure off.

While Kwan’s overall season stats still look rough in some areas, Cleveland should be more than encouraged with what he’s been able to do at the plate over the last few weeks.

Since mid-May, Kwan has logged a .243/.357/.271 slash line, coming out with an 88 wRC+. 

Including Cleveland's win on Friday evening, in which Kwan drove in the game-winning run with his second hit of the game, the Guardians are 9-5 this season when he logs a multi-hit game. 

After only logging three multi-hit games in May, Kwan already has four in June. 

The strikeout rate and walk rate have never truly been an issue, even during this extended slump; it’s been all about the quality of Kwan’s contact, but for what it’s worth, he owns a walk rate of 15 percent and a strikeout rate of seven percent in the last month. 

There is definitely still more room for improvement, especially in the slug department, but Kwan is slowly getting back to being the on-base machine that made him a top leadoff candidate to begin with. 

The Guardians haven’t been necessarily shocked by the slight uptick in Kwan’s production. 

In fact, Stephen Vogt said after Kwan had a two-hit game in Cleveland’s win over the Detroit Tigers on Friday that he actually made a slight adjustment during the Texas Rangers series last weekend.

“The ball has been jumping off his bat a lot better,” said Cleveland’s skipper. “That was vintage Kwanny [on Friday night]. Shoot a fastball to left [field], and then get a split up in the zone, drive it to right center. Kwanny can hit, we know that, and he’s definitely heading in the right direction.”

Kwan downplayed the idea that a single adjustment led to these recent encouraging results and is just trying to get back to basics with his swing and mindset at the plate.

“It’s hard to say. We’ve been working on a ton of stuff,” Kwan said postgame Friday. 

“I think the biggest thing is being aggressive on balls in the zone, and trying to just get back to, like, good line drives, not overthinking it… I think it’s just see ball, hit ball.”

Again, Kwan still has a ways to go, but if he can get back to being even a league-average hitter for the Guardians, the team will have a much better idea of what it needs to address heading into the trade deadline. 

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