Guardians may have already made Steven Kwan trade mistake

Guardians may have already made Steven Kwan trade mistake originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

At the midway point of the 2025 MLB season, Cleveland Guardians fans wanted nothing to do with trading Steven Kwan.

The rumors suggested that Kwan was on the block, and he likely would've commanded a big return.

The Guardians didn't end up making any deals, and not in the offseason, either. And there's at least some question now as to whether that was actually a mistake.

Kwan's numbers in 2025 were down across the board from 2024. And now so far this season, they're even worse.

Yes, it's still a relatively small sample size in 2026, but Kwan's OPS has gone from .793 in 2024 to .704 last season to .628 now.

Kwan's average in 2024 was .292, then down to .272 and now .241.

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The lefty is also a Gold Glove winner in left field who seems to have adapted very well to some time in centerfield this season. He's by no means a broken or useless player.

But he's always going to a player on the brink of effective or ineffective at the plate.

He has a 1st-percentile exit velocity so far this season, averaging just 81.5 miles per hour. That comes in part because of his 1st-percentile bat speed, 62.7 MPH.

Kwan has never rated highly in those metrics. He's always around Luis Arraez in those marks, and Arraez is a three-time batting champion.

By the same token, lots of value is placed in modern baseball in OPS and slugging metrics, not just batting average. And right now, Kwan isn't even hitting for average.