Jim Ingraham: Steven Kwan knows how to hit ... and does it as well as just about anyone

Some guys can just hit. In 2016, playing in the West Coast Collegiate League, Steven Kwan hit .400. In 2017, at Oregon State, Steven Kwan hit .331. In 2017, in the Cape Cod League, Steven Kwan hit .304. In 2018, at Oregon State, Steven Kwan hit .356. In 2018, at Mahoning Valley and the Arizona Rookie League, Steven Kwan hit a combined .346. In 2021, at Akron and Columbus, Steven Kwan hit a combined .328. With the Guardians in 2022, Steven Kwan hit .298. With the Guardians this year, Steven Kwan, at the start of play Friday night, was hitting .367, which led the American League by 48 points. Some guys can just hit. Steven Kwan is one of those guys. He makes hitting look easy. But it's not. Hitting is hard. Really hard. Especially in the major leagues, where the pitchers are really good. It has been 70 years since a Cleveland player led the American League in hitting. The last to do it was second baseman Bobby Avila, for the 1954 American League champion Indians. Avila that year hit .341. At the start of play Friday night Steven Kwan was hitting .367. From 1901 through 2023, a total of 1,984 players participated in one or more official American League games with the Cleveland franchise. Only six of those players won a batting title: Nap Lajoie in 1903 and 1904, Elmer Flick in 1905, Tris Speaker in 1916, Lew Fonseca in 1929, Lou Boudreau in 1944 and Avila in 1954. Only three of those players had higher batting averages than what Steven Kwan was hitting at the start of play Friday night: Lajoie hit .376 in 1904, Speaker hit .386 in 1916 and Fonseca hit .369 in 1929. What will Kwan hit in 2024? We have no way of knowing, but what we do know is that some guys can just hit, and Kwan is one of those guys. We have no numbers on what Kwan hit at Fremont (California) High School (the same school that produced Dennis Eckersley), but chances are Kwan was raking there, too. Hitters hit, because that is what hitters do. Size has nothing to do with it. Steven Kwan is listed at 5-foot-9, 170 pounds. Back before the turn of the century — not the last one, the one before that — Wee Willie Keeler, standing a robust 5-4, 140 pounds, hit over .300 for 17 consecutive years, and finished with a career batting average of .341. This year, in a nine-game span from June 15-24, Kwan hit .444 with more home runs (three) than strikeouts (two). That's another feather in King Kwan's hat: The dude almost never strikes out. He's averaging 11.4 at-bats per strikeout, by far the best in the league, although second in that category, at 7.3, was Jose Ramirez. Like most great hitters, when Kwan swings the bat, the ball gets hit. Kwan, Ramirez and Josh Naylor are the only Guardians players with more RBIs than strikeouts. This week Kwan and Ramirez were named starters for the American League All-Star team, and rightfully so. It will be interesting to see who will be the leadoff hitter for the American League. If it is not Kwan, shame on the American League. Kwan was born to hit leadoff. So far this year in the American League only Juan Soto and Aaron Judge have higher on-base percentages than Kwan's .424. However, Kwan's most impressive stat is probably this: He's second on his team in slugging percentage — as a leadoff hitter! Think about that. That is almost unheard of. Ramirez led the team with a .539 slugging percentage entering Friday, but Kwan — the leadoff hitter! — was right behind him at .538. For crying out loud, Kwan, as a leadoff hitter, was tied for third on the team with eight home runs, and he missed roughly a month of the season due to a strained hamstring. This is epic stuff for a leadoff hitter, and did we mention that Kwan is a two-time, soon to be three-time, Gold Glove-winning left fielder? Talk about great scouting. In the 2018 draft, the Guardians made Kwan the second-last player selected in the fifth round. He was the 163rd player drafted overall. He is now one of the best all-around players in the major leagues. Let's just say this is his first, but certainly not his last appearance on the American League All-Star team. The ascension of Kwan from a fifth-round nobody into one of the most skilled somebodies in the game is a tribute to the team that drafted him, and his own work ethic. Kwan is the kind of player around whom teams build, and sustain, a winning culture. Indeed, it does not seem out of line, assuming he can stay healthy over the long haul, to declare Kwan a potential future franchise linchpin, not unlike the great Jose Ramirez. Contact Jim Ingraham at jingraham4@gmail.com. Follow him @Jim_Ingraham on x.