Steven Kwan and Adjustments
Steven Kwan went off in April, silent in May, and nuclear in June. Do those outcomes mean anything?
The Cleveland Guardians’ offense entered Friday evening, (June 24th, 2022), 11th in runs scored per game and 16th in wRC+. For the Guardians, merely average offense is a leap over the empty lineups from 2019-2021. This season the team’s offense can be described as somewhere north of frisky, whatever that means. There are a number of potentially responsible factors, be it an investment in athleticism, an offense constructed on putting the ball in play and forcing defenses to make plays, or Jose Ramirez making another run at an MVP Award.
The prevailing question for any of the Guardians offensive breakouts: Is it for real? This question is relevant to so many young players be it Owen Miller, Andres Gimenez, Oscar Gonzalez, and even Richie Palacios, but today the focus rests with the new leadoff hitter against right handed pitching, Steven Kwan. Once again, there will not be any certain answers but merely exposition of what little is known.
Steven Kwan
Back in the fall of 2021, this author called on the team to prioritize Steven Kwan at the big league level and the profile is exactly what could have been expected. Kwan has been 13% better than the league average hitter (113 wRC+) due to his insane contact skills (7.5% strikeout rate, lowest in baseball) and exquisite discipline (18th lowest swing rate on pitches outside the zone among 155 qualified hitters). Kwan swings incredibly infrequently in general, just 37.8%, 5th lowest in baseball.
There was certainly a dip in his overall production during the month of May, but Kwan’s June has dispelled that swoon. Because of how often Kwan puts the ball in play, his weighted on base average is heavily linked to his batting average on balls in play. As shown by the below, Kwan’s May collapse was mostly linked to his BABIP.
The next obvious next question is whether Kwan’s contact quality changed to precipitate this change in BABIP outcomes. Below is Kwan’s expected batting average on a rolling plate appearance basis.
Kwan’s rolling xBA is a good example of the impact of small windows of contact quality and variance in outcomes can oscillate.
The league has made some adjustments to Kwan however, most noticeable has been aggression in the strike zone. Pitches in the strike zone for Kwan:
April: 46.9%
May: 51.7%
June: 55%
With this in mind, Kwan has increased his swing rate, though marginally over the course of the past two months. But the biggest change is that Kwan has simply seen a lot more fastballs, as he is seeing nearly 69% fastballs in June compared to 58% in April.
As adjustments go, this will simply require more aggression as Kwan has held his own against big league fastballs (Kwan has a .344 xwOBA against four-seam fastballs). Big league pitchers will continue to attack Kwan with fastballs in the zone to make him create damage. His low-end exit velocities, and elite patience mean pounding the zone with fastballs is the best approach for opposing staffs.
The question now, is can Kwan attack and punish fastballs with more frequency? This is unanswerable but with his barrel control and existing success against fastballs, the odds are in his favor.