We took a hiatus in this series from outfield prospects after profiling George Valera, but Valera likely won’t be playing full time in Cleveland until 2023. As things stand now the Guardians have one-and-a-half locks for the outfield in Myles Straw and Franmil Reyes, the latter of whom spent limited time in right field late in 2021 and has worked to improve his tracking this offseason. That leaves Cleveland with Bradley Zimmer and Oscar Mercado, both of whom have shown flashes, but have never put it all together consistently.
Mercado had an electric 2019 season, then abruptly fell off a cliff in 2020 and never recovered. Meanwhile, Zimmer uncorked a few massive home runs down the stretch in 2021, but his 35.1% strikeout clip and mediocre career .225 batting average don’t have the makings of an everyday regular. It’s unlikely the Guardians carry both players on their opening day roster despite them accounting for barely more than an estimated $2 million in payroll, so a trade or at least one free agent signing feel imminent, but that still leaves room for a promotion from within.
The Guardians have more middle-infielders than places to put them, and we knew last season that Nolan Jones had begun to play right field in order to get him in the lineup sooner. However, there’s another left-handed bat in the outfield sneaking up the farm system that wasn’t being talked about nearly enough before now. Allow me to introduce you to Steven Kwan.
https://twitter.com/CLBClippers/status/1434622346770399232?s=20&t=LVeqtQyBKOJHZRBWdvAGKQ
Kwan, 24, was a 5th round pick out of Oregon State in 2018 where he was an All PAC-12 Conference Honorable Mention and All PAC-12 Conference Academic Honorable Mention in 2017. The former Beaver has done nothing but hit, and hit, and hit, and hit some more in his career, but with a 5’9″ frame that many scouts didn’t project much power from — if any at all — Kwan hadn’t appeared on many top prospect lists since being drafted. However, just this week, Kwan was ranked 57th on FanGraphs’ 2022 Top-100 Prospects list with a freshly updated 80-grade hit tool, something not awarded freely. So what changed for Kwan in 2021?
Entering his fifth year as a pro Kwan remained one of the most consistent players in Cleveland’s system after playing 77 games split between Double-A Akron and Triple-A Columbus. He posted an electric .328/.407/.527 triple slash while adding 15 doubles, a career-high 12 home runs and more walks (36) than strikeouts (31). For Kwan, this was just another season, but some changes to his swing as noted below by Justin Lada of Guardians Baseball Insider may have contributed to some newfound power as he quadrupled his previous best home run total in 46 fewer games.
Going through my videos to writeup Steven Kwan today. Can see the more upright stance in 2021 than 2019.
This change & approach to turn on inside pitches led to an increase in both FB% and pull% in 2021 pic.twitter.com/Y6Tamhyr7u
— Justin L. (@JL_Baseball) December 18, 2021
Even as he reached the highest levels of the farm, Kwan furthered his incredible track record in the minors in nearly every significant statistic. Now with over 200 games under his belt, Kwan is a career .301 hitter in the minors with 100 career walks paired to just 87 strikeouts, a career .320 BABIP and .380 OBP. He has never posted a batting average below .280 and a wRC+ below 115, both of which happened in 2019 which seem like extremes looking at the rest of his numbers.
Defensively Kwan profiles as a center fielder with excellent route running skills and an above average arm. He’s played the overwhelming majority of his games in center, but his skills could easily translate to left field as well. So far through the minors Kwan has recorded a .982 FPCT, having committed just 10 errors in over 1600 innings in the outfield. So with all of this said, what do we expect of Kwan in 2022?
Before this season the height and power criticisms on Kwan were fair game, as he’d never hit more than three home runs in a single season despite enough gap power to be a double-hitting machine, but for comparison Kwan’s listed height of 5’9″ is the same as Jose Ramirez and three inches taller than Jose Altuve. In the FanGraphs Top-100 Prospects Chat that followed the list being published yesterday, Eric Logenhagen expanded on Kwan, stating that the 80-grade hit tool is only the fourth he’s ever awarded (Wander Franco, Willians Astudillo, and Nick Madrigal) and that Kwan has started posting faster run times sparking a jump to 60-grade speed. Not to mention ZiPS loves Kwan, projecting him to slash .287/.343/.426 and post 2.1 fWAR in 2022.
Obviously Kwan has to perform at the major league level, but as things stand now it seems Cleveland grabbed another strong prospect that others overlooked due to his size. On the surface, after his 2021 season and the recent bump in his scouting grades, Kwan might be the toolsiest outfielder the Guardians have seen in years. If the power trend we saw in 2021 continues — he posted a career-best .199 ISO — then Kwan looks every bit like the top prospect his numbers point towards. Barring some bizarre trade or topsy-turvy free agent signing Kwan is likely to be the opening day left fielder in Cleveland with Myles Straw patrolling center. This might just be the most optimistic I’ve been about a Cleveland outfielder in a decade.