{"id":70437,"date":"2024-04-12T15:45:56","date_gmt":"2024-04-12T19:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=70437"},"modified":"2024-04-12T16:23:48","modified_gmt":"2024-04-12T20:23:48","slug":"steven-kwan-consistent-outfielder-guardians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/04\/12\/steven-kwan-consistent-outfielder-guardians\/","title":{"rendered":"Guardians Gold Glover Leads the AL in Batting Average, Leads MLB in Hits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Cleveland Guardians are surprising many teams and they are on a roll of late. But don&#8217;t look now, as\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/k\/kwanst01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-04-12_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Steven Kwan<\/a> leads the American League with a .386 batting average. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/v\/volpean01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-04-12_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Anthony Volpe<\/a> of the New York Yankees is behind Kwan, who&#8217;s hitting .372. Kwan is also leading all batters in the majors with 22 hits. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/search\/search.fcgi?pid=smithwi05,smithwi04,smith-091wil,smith-090wil,smith-088wil&amp;search=Will+Smith&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-04-12_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Will Smith<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/o\/ohtansh01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-04-12_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Shohei Ohtani<\/a> of the Los Angeles Dodgers are right behind him with 21 hits a piece. Kwan, a two-time Gold Glove Award winner, is certainly making a case for an All-Star-like campaign.<\/p>\n<h2><strong><strong>Steven Kwan<\/strong><\/strong> Just Keeps on Hitting<\/h2>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Good morning!<\/p>\n<p>Not only does Steven Kwan lead the American league in batting average, Kwan leads the entire MLB in hits too.<\/p>\n<p>All Star campaign? ?<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/ForTheLand?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#ForTheLand<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/rRL464oQFO\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/rRL464oQFO<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Nick Karns (@karnsies817) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/karnsies817\/status\/1778776517264150678?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">April 12, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Cleveland&#8217;s leadoff hitter has a slash of .386\/.397\/.526 through the first 12 games of the season. Kwan has said that his approach was to &#8220;Be aggressive, spoil some pitches, see what happens, and put the ball in play.&#8221; That game plan has clearly helped the former Rookie of the Year finalist.\u00a0Kwan also has a solid WAR of 0.9. Manager <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/v\/vogtst01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-04-12_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Stephen Vogt<\/a> knows how important Kwan is to the team saying:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What Kwan means to the top of this lineup and to help our team in general, you can&#8217;t say enough about, Vogt said. &#8220;He got us going to start the season.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>According to Stathead, the left fielder tied a Cleveland franchise record with his fourth three-hit game in the team&#8217;s first ten games of the season. Kwan is the sixth hitter to accomplish the feat as he&#8217;s the first since former catcher and current Guardians first base coach <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/search\/search.fcgi?pid=alomasa02,alomasa01&amp;search=Sandy+Alomar&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-04-12_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sandy Alomar Jr.<\/a>.Five other players to reach the mark for the club are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/j\/jeffere01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-04-12_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Reggie Jefferson<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/l\/laryly01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-04-12_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Lyn Lary<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/s\/speaktr01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-04-12_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tris Speaker<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/b\/bradlbi01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-04-12_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bill Bradley<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3>Kwan is Poised for a Breakout Year<\/h3>\n<p>Making his debut in 2022, Kwan has a career total of 41 stolen bases. In 2022, he also finished the year with the second-best swinging strike rate in all of baseball at 3.1 percent. With everything he&#8217;s done so far in his career, he&#8217;s posted for a breakout campaign. Despite not being known as a power-hitter, he only has 11 home runs and slugged .384 in his career. Yet his tremendous contact ability along with his speed helps him add more pop to his game.<\/p>\n<p>Kwan appears to be the whole package, as he also has speed. He&#8217;s surely a hot ticket player, and it will be exciting to see what numbers he will put up for the rest of the season. He&#8217;s certainly a valuable player and asset to the Guardians and represents exciting young talent. His impressive 2022 rookie season is looking like the one he&#8217;s having now. Could he go from an impressive rookie to being a contender for MVP? His consistency as a performer and defensive asset has made him an appealing player in the majors.<\/p>\n<p><em>Main Photo: \u00a9 Jeff Lange \/ USA TODAY NETWORK<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Cleveland Guardians are surprising many teams and they are on a roll of late. But don&#8217;t look now, as\u00a0Steven Kwan leads the American League with a .386 batting average. Anthony Volpe of the New York Yankees is behind Kwan, who&#8217;s hitting .372. Kwan is also leading all batters in the majors with 22 hits. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4831,"featured_media":70460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,1071],"tags":[3461,393,2178,907,5613,5232,305],"class_list":["post-70437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guardians","category-mlb","tag-anthony-volpe","tag-sandy-alomar-jr","tag-shohei-ohtani","tag-stephen-vogt","tag-steven-kwan","tag-tris-speaker","tag-will-smith"],"modified_by":"Matt Graves","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4831"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}