Guardians’ Steven Kwan flirting with .400 batting average as MLB approaches the season’s halfway point

Guardians leader Steven Kwan led off Thursday afternoon’s game against the Mariners with a double (it would end in a 6-3 Guardians victory). This raised his batting average to .400. He would record a walk before striking out his final two hits, dropping his average to .396 from the year before the game ended. Yet …

Everyone cheers up, right? A player’s batting average was .400! At the end of June!

Major League Baseball hasn’t seen a qualified .400 hitter since Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941. The word “qualified” is important here. This means a player has played enough to qualify for the batting title. As a rule, there are 3.1 plate appearances for each game your team played. Kwan missed time with an injury earlier this season, so he has just 46 games played at the moment.

He also has 209 appearances in 72 Guardians games. That’s 2.9 plate appearances per game, so he’s not eligible. Assuming he stays healthy here for the next few weeks – remember, he hits the lead – he’ll get there soon. Just keep in mind as we move forward that Kwan is not yet qualified.

In recent years, we’ve seen players flirt a bit with .400 before falling off. Remember Cody Bellinger in 2019? He was hitting .404 in 47 games. He finished at .305, although he was good enough all year to win NL MVP. Luis Arraez had a great race last year. He was hitting .401 in 78 Marlins games as of June 24. He was still at .381 on August 1st.

For those curious, here are some other prominent players who had a .400 run and where they were in 72 team games.

• Tony Gwynn hit .394 in 1994. He hit .384 in 72 Padres games, but remember it was a strike-shortened season and they only played 117. In 1997, Gwynn ended up hitting .372. In 72 Padres games, he was hitting .391.
• George Brett hit .390 in 1980. In 72 Royals games (and only 45 himself), he hit just .337.
• Ichiro Suzuki hit .372 in 2004 and in 72 Mariners games, he hit just .323.
• Larry Walker hit .379 in 1999 and was at .382 in 72 Rockies games.
• Rod Carew hit .388 in 1977 and hit .408 in 72 Twins games.

Maybe Kwan is having a wave like Brett and Suzuki. He was hitting .353 when he went on the injured list in early May. Since leaving in time for a game on May 31, he has a 14-game hitting streak in eight different games, including four games with at least three hits.

Once again, Kwan is now hitting .396 through June 20th. He also has a skill set – like Arráez – that suggests he could keep this thing in the public eye for a while. He rarely strikes out, with just 14 strikeouts in 185 at-bats this season. He only struck out 75 times in 718 games last season. He spreads the ball to all fields, hitting it into the opposite field almost as much as pulling it with most balls headed toward the middle. Only about 20% of his balls in play are fly balls, leaving the rest as line drives or grounders.

His batting average on balls in play this season is .413 and some might say that’s unsustainable, but he’s a speedy lefty who hits a lot of grounders and line drives without striking out much. It’s exactly the kind of skill set that could execute an atypical BABIP.

Basically, Kwan puts the ball in play a lot and gives himself a great chance of the ball finding a hole whenever it is in play. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that he continues flirting with .400 for a while.