Guardians nudge Kwan to start swinging away

CLEVELAND When he steps into the batter’s box and his face pops up on the scoreboard beside a bunch of statistics, Steven Kwan never peeks at those numbers.

“Ever,” Kwan said.

The numbers are striking this season. More than a quarter of the way into the season, Kwan has yet to find a rhythm at the plate. It has been an uncharacteristic stretch for a two-time All-Star who has served as the Cleveland Guardians’ leadoff hitter since 2022.

This year, Kwan is hitting .206, with a .311 on-base percentage and a .265 slugging percentage.

“Obviously, the start’s pretty disappointing, just from an overall production standpoint,” he said.

Kwan was given a rare day off to rest Wednesday, and the Guardians (24-21), who lead the American League Central, did not play Thursday. Angel Martinez played left field and batted leadoff.

In his first at-bat Tuesday, Kwan worked the count to 2-1 against Los Angeles Angels starter Walbert Ureña before he socked a low-and-away changeup to left field for a single. It was vintage Kwan, depositing a tough pitch into a vacant plot of outfield grass. It was precisely the type of counter the coaching staff has been seeking, an answer to the growing trend of pitchers peppering the outside corner when facing him.

The single snapped Kwan’s 0-for-12 funk.

“This is the time now to really believe in ‘no highs, no lows, stay right in the middle,’” he said. “Before, I’ve had the comfort of having some good numbers and then when a dry spell happens, ‘OK, well, I still have these numbers to fall back on.’ Obviously, I don’t have that luxury this time, but I just have to frame it as a good, new challenge.”

In their two encounters, Ureña tossed six of seven pitches to the outer part of the plate. At this point, the approach is unsurprising to Kwan.

“He’s looking to try to figure out ways to get them to throw him back to his hot zones,” Cleveland hitting coach Grant Fink said.

Those hot zones are on the inner half of the plate. Pitchers know that. Pitchers also know Kwan almost never swings at the first pitch.

MLB batters, on average, swing at the first pitch about 30% of the time. Kwan’s first-pitch swing percentage is 9.6%.

One strategic tweak that could pay dividends, right?

“Aggression early in the count, first pitch,” the team’s bench coach, Tony Arnerich, said.

Otherwise, Kwan risks an automatic 0-1 deficit every trip to the plate.

“He’s just getting behind early,” Fink said. “So we’ve had a lot of conversations about being a little more aggressive, ready to hit earlier on.”

It’s not just the first pitch.

Kwan is swinging at about 36% of all pitches, the lowest mark of his career and more than 11% lower than the league average. He is swinging at only 51.2% of what Statcast deems “meatballs,” pitches thrown down the middle, 25 percentage points lower than the league-average swing rate on those pitches. Kwan said that in the last few weeks in particular, he has seen mistake pitches and has “not capitalized on them.”

Part of the issue is timing, and Kwan said he and the hitting coaches are “trying to pinpoint” how to correct it.

Granted, he is not seeing a ton of meatballs. He is seeing plenty of pitches away, especially after pitchers flip in a first-pitch strike.

“I feel like every at-bat, I’m going up there with two strikes,” Kwan said, “and I have to fight, defend.”

And that, the Guardians contend, has spurred drastic decreases in some of his under-the-hood numbers. Kwan is not a metrics darling to begin with -- at least when it comes to batted ball data -- but he is experiencing significant decreases in exit velocity, hard-hit rate and bat speed. It is not that his metrics are low; it’s that they are so much lower than usual for him.

His exit velocities, which were around 85-86 mph from 2022 to 2025, are about 82 mph this season. His lowest hard-hit rate in a season from 2022 to 2025 was 18.8% in 2023. This year it is 10.5%.

“Two strikes, the bat speed’s always going to fall,” Kwan said.

More two-strike counts equal more defensive swings, more attempts to keep the at-bat going, rather than uncorking an aggressive swing that aims to inflict damage. His average exit velocity against two-strike pitches is 81.4 mph, another tick below his overall mark. He is still drawing walks at a healthy rate, and he is adept at avoiding strikeouts.

He is one of 15 qualified hitters with more walks than strikeouts.

He makes an almost unparalleled amount of contact. But not all contact is productive.

“He’s trying to find that right now so guys have to start coming back in and not just living away for three pitches in a row,” Fink said. “And being a little more aggressive so he doesn’t allow them to get to 0-2.”

Until the Guardians caught wind last season that their All-Star closer, Emmanuel Clase, was on nondisciplinary paid leave for his alleged involvement in a pitch-rigging scheme, they were fielding offers for him. When he became unavailable, as one team source described it, rival clubs smelled blood in the water, figuring the Guardians had no choice but to ship out Kwan.

One rival executive, just before last year’s trade deadline, referred to Kwan as “immensely valuable.” José Ramírez teased his teammate that it was his “last day” on the team. (In reality, Ramírez and the rest of the clubhouse desperately wanted Kwan to stay.) Kwan’s agent even flew to Cleveland to talk through scenarios leading up to the deadline.

The Padres, Astros, Blue Jays, Phillies, Dodgers and Reds all checked in. A few of those teams scoffed at Cleveland’s price. The Padres opted to deal their prime prospect chip for Mason Miller, a closer. The Phillies could not align on a package. The Dodgers instead made upgrades on the margins.

Nine minutes before the trade deadline, Guardians team president Chris Antonetti called Kwan and told him he could exhale. They were not trading him.

In the clubhouse, there was a collective sigh of relief. The Guardians had weathered a 10-game skid and the shocking departures of Clase and Luis Ortiz. They were hanging around the periphery of the wild-card race. Ultimately, they stormed back to win the AL Central. Kwan had a rough August (.214 average, .514 on-base plus slugging percentage) and a so-so September (.279 average, .699 OPS).

This year, he has had a brutal April and a bad start to May.

“It’s funny, at times I think, ‘Oh, fifth year, I’ve experienced everything,’” Kwan said. “And then something new comes up. So it’s something I can learn from.”

He is under team control through next season. It is in both parties’ best interest for him to recapture his form, and the Guardians are confident there will be a course correction. There is time for this seven-week stretch to be a mere footnote.

But the Guardians are not backing away from him in the leadoff spot.

“Kwan’s been a really good player for a good amount of time,” Arnerich said. “We don’t doubt that he’s going to come out of it. He’s working. He’s doing the right things. He’s having good at-bats. You have to trust guys.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Copyright 2026 The New York Times Company

This story was originally published May 16, 2026 at 11:53 AM.