Steven kwan is trending as Guardians ALCS run meets rival trade chatter

Why Steven Kwan is trending

Steven Kwan is a name baseball searches are pulling up for two separate reasons right now. The Guardians are in the American League Championship Series for the second time in three seasons, and Kwan has been one of the team's steadier performers since before the All-Star break. At the same time, writers covering other teams have started floating his name in hypothetical trade talk, which is why you might be seeing his name pop up outside of Cleveland coverage too.

None of the trade talk is official. It comes from team blogs, specifically pieces from outlets covering the Cincinnati Reds and St. Louis Cardinals, both framed explicitly as hypotheticals rather than reported rumors. What is known is Kwan's actual season and his current role in the ALCS. What is not known is whether either club will pursue anything, or whether Cleveland would even entertain it. What happens next, in the short term, is the ALCS continuing with Kwan in his usual leadoff spot.

The season that got him here

Kwan's year did not start well. Through May 15 he was hitting .201/.308/.258 and got bumped out of the leadoff role and down to the bottom third of Cleveland's order. From May 16 through July 18, over a 49-game stretch, he hit .276/.380/.338, which was enough to earn his spot back atop the lineup.

He finished strong. Over his final 60 games of the regular season, Kwan posted a .340/.433/.417 line with a 13.8 percent walk rate, a 9.4 percent strikeout rate, and a 148 wRC+. In six ALCS games his average has dipped to .208, built on five singles, but four walks have kept his on-base percentage at a respectable .321. For his career he is a .282/.357/.382 hitter who has drawn more walks than strikeouts, with a 112 wRC+.

The trade talk is strictly hypothetical

Kwan has been a popular name for Reds fans for a couple of seasons now, partly because of his ties to manager Terry Francona from their time together in Cleveland, and partly because Cincinnati keeps looking for outfield depth. A Reds-focused blog argued he fits a return to a contact-first hitting philosophy the club has talked about, pointing to his career line and his walk-to-strikeout ratio as the selling point.

Separately, a Cardinals-focused writer pitched Kwan as an upgrade option, calling it a hypothetical he was not actually asking St. Louis to execute. That piece noted his lack of power, an ISO as low as .067 in one season, but argued his contact and on-base skills would still play. The same piece mentioned a season in which Kwan posted a career high walk rate and OBP along with 14 home runs and a career high wRC+, followed by a weaker season with a career low walk rate before he pushed his walk rate back up to 13.3 percent.

What's next

For now, Kwan's immediate story is the ALCS, not a transaction. The Guardians are playing for a trip to the World Series, and Kwan's bat at the top of the order is part of how they got there. The trade pieces out of Cincinnati and St. Louis are fan and analyst speculation, not club-reported news, and nothing in them suggests either front office has made a call.

Facts per Viva El Birdos, Blog Red Machine. Opinion is the taproom's.