Surging Kwan ‘cautiously optimistic’ he’s trending in right direction
This story was excerpted from Tim Stebbins’ Guardians Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
CLEVELAND — Jose Ramirez and Angel Martínez are getting closer to rejoining the Guardians’ lineup. Steven Kwan, meanwhile, may also be on his way to a return.
For now, the two-time All-Star is at least “cautiously optimistic” about how he’s been trending offensively during what has been the worst season of his career at the plate.
“People are really nice, and they want to tell you, ‘You’re back,’” Kwan said. “It’s like, thanks, but it’s only been a couple weeks. That’s part of the neutral that I try to stay at. I don’t want to fall in love with a couple of series. But it feels a little better.”
Entering Monday, Kwan had logged a hit in 18 of his past 21 games. He held a .436/.522/.590 slash line in 14 games this month, after he slashed .212/.318/.257 in 78 games through June.
The timeline is not exactly a coincidence. Kwan embraced an ideology change following a conversation he and the Guardians’ hitting team had around July 1.
“It was a joint thing where we were all just kind of like, ‘Hey, if we’re gonna live or die on a hill, let’s just die on the hill of what got us here in the first place,’” Kwan said. “‘If the exit velos drop down to 70 mph but we’re getting singles, let’s just take it.’
“At the point where I was, I was not helping the team offensively. We’re still trying to win a division here. … I’m not going to take that for granted.”
For a while this season, Kwan remained stubborn regarding what worked for him in the past. He’d hunt pitches middle-in, and if he didn’t get pitched there, he wouldn’t swing. With his elite contact skills, he could always battle if he fell into a two-strike count.
The problem this season is pitchers have peppered Kwan on the outer half of the plate. Entering Monday, 25.5 percent of the offerings he’d seen were in the two further most up-and-away zones (fourth highest in MLB among left-handed hitters). Kwan has often fallen behind and had to battle without getting much in his hot zones.
Recently, Kwan has been taking what the pitchers give him. Entering Monday, he was hitting the ball to the opposite field 43.2% of the time in July — up from 27.9% in June. His line-drive rate this month (45.7%) was also a season high, and his fly ball rate (17.1%) was a season low.
Beyond how he’s been pitched, Kwan noted some cues he previously leaned on haven’t worked the way they did several years ago. His swing hasn’t been where he wants it. There have been mechanical things he’s worked on. Kwan is past the right wrist issue that plagued him last summer, but it created some bad habits.
He’s had to get back to square one.
“There was probably a little fragment of ego in there too,” Kwan said, “where it’s like, ‘I can still pull the ball. I can still hit homers.’ I probably had that as my identity for a little too long, and it might still be in there.
“But for right now, where I am, I had to devolve back to, ‘OK let’s just keep the angles down low, walk, see pitches,’ and just kind of go from there.”
There’s likely been at least some luck here. Kwan’s batting average on balls in play was .472 in July, entering Monday. (League average is considered .300.) But he’s producing, and if he can keep it rolling, it would go a long way toward the Guardians’ postseason push.
The Guardians entered Monday last in runs per game this season (3.92).
Kwan acknowledged this is the toughest stretch he’s had from a mental perspective. He’s pleased with the recent production. He’s also trying to stay neutral through the highs and the lows.
“Showing up to do your job and you do it poorly every single day, that gets really tiring,” he said. “You can have the right attitude. But at the end of the day, you just want to do something for the boys, help the team, be able to look in the mirror when you go home and be like, ‘OK, I didn’t suck today.’ That over and over gets really tiring
“It’s definitely hard, but thankfully, kind of staying neutral the whole time, even on the eyes, I think that helped me not completely crash out and go down the rabbit hole of negative thoughts and bad things that could happen.”