How Steven Kwan continues to earn Gold Gloves

Steven Kwan looks like the kind of man who is underestimated. He’s undersized. He doesn’t hit the ball particularly hard. He plays for a franchise best known for its refusal to spend money. Still, I don’t think many people underestimate Kwan these days. He is the Guardians’ undisputed second-best player, behind only the future Hall of Famer Jose Ramirez. He is a two-time All-Star. He has never posted less than 3.0 WAR in a season. He never is not won a gold glove. Everyone knows he’s a great player, but I’d like to highlight a few specific parts of his game that we often take for granted.

Kwan’s defense certainly gets a lot of credit. In two of his four Major League seasons (2023 and 2025), he has achieved the three advanced defensive metrics, finishing first among all left fielders in Defensive Runs Saved, Deserved Runs Prevented and Fielding Run Value. In 2022 he finished first in both DRS and FRV, but did not lead in DRP. In 2024, he finished second in FRV and fourth in DRS (but due to the arguably arcane innings minimum of 900, he led all Gold Glove-eligible left fielders in both metrics). The point of this complicated litany is that all the major defensive metrics like Kwan, and that’s important because they use very different methods, methods don’t always match. DRS hates it Oneil Cruzbut FRV thinks he’s great. DRP loves Randy Arozarena even though the other two systems hate his guts. All systems can agree on Kwan. Whether you’re breaking down video footage with human eyes or analyzing catch probability through the lens of a high-speed Statcast camera, when you look at Kwan you’re looking at the best left fielder in the game.

Yet in a previous era, without these various advanced perspectives, we might not have appreciated Kwan as much as we should. He never had tremendous speed, especially for an outfielder. In fact, his speed has been below average the past two seasons. He also makes surprisingly few stunning catches. He makes a decent percentage of his four- and five-star chances, and like so many great defenders, he makes them look too easy. His highlight reel is shockingly light on the full-out, gravity-defying diving catch we normally associate with top-tier outfield defense. This was the only example he offered in 2025:

Nowadays we know enough not to be fooled. Kwan’s jumps perform exceptionally well, and he is aggressive when attacking the ball into the hole and down the line. That is more important than your top sprint speed. Kwan does the little things well too, and today we’re going to focus on two of those little things.

Progressive field is particularly shallow in left field. It is 325 feet down the line and 370 feet in the hole. As a result, opposing left fielders position themselves at an average depth of just 250 feet, shallower than any stadium except Fenway Park. Progressive also has a high wall, and the combination of these two factors means that outfielders have to play against the wall a lot. That’s a specialty of Kwan. According to Statcast, he failed to catch just one ball close to the wall in 2025 and had a catch probability of more than 15%. In his entire four-season career, he has only managed to catch such a ball six times. Six! And even though he doesn’t explain much, he does create dazzling plays on the wall:

Some of these plays, like the one above, look spectacular. But many of them don’t, and it’s surprisingly easy for an outfielder to hide a deficiency in wall skills. If an outfielder is concerned about hitting the wall, he or she may slow down in pursuit of the ball. By the time the ball drops, it looks like they never had a chance to catch it. You’d never guess that these plays had respective catch rates of 90% and 70%, even when you factor in a wall difficulty discount:

When that move loses its effectiveness, the outfielder can pull the ball up and put it in the field. If they pull it off smoothly, it looks like they’ve been playing smart all along by keeping the runner on a single. It obscures the fact that the ball would have been very catchable if they had, you know, tried to catch it. Of course, sometimes the ball bounces over the wall for a basic rule double, which tends to break the spell:

If you’re wondering why I chose it Andreas Benintendi on all of these plays, it’s because Statcast rated him the worst outfielder in baseball in 2025. I couldn’t have put these clips together for Kwan. He always goes after the ball hard and almost always catches it. Seriously, the man is fearless:

Those plays on the wall are important not only because they look cool and pose a risk of injury. Balls on the wall represent big swings in value. A wall ball that falls in is good for a dime, especially if you mess it up big time.

The last piece I want to mention is Kwan’s arm. It’s the reason I wanted to write about him in the first place. Kwan led all outfielders with 13 assists in 2025. It’s a big part of the reason he won his fourth Gold Glove, but I tend to be leery of the gaudy outfield assist totals. They are not particularly sticky year after year, as they involve a fair amount of luck and chance. A perfect throw can come to nothing because the runner pulls up at the last moment, or because he executes a perfect swimming motion, or because he knocks the ball out of the fielder’s glove, or because the fielder makes a clumsy tap, or because the fielder rushes to make the tap and fails to catch it – the list goes on. But Kwan has been extremely consistent. In his four seasons, he has collected 40 assists, the most in a game. He has led the league once and has never ranked lower than eleventh.

Again, all three key defensive metrics value Kwan’s arm. It ranks ninth according to Statcast, eleventh according to DRS and third according to DRP. Kwan has a track record of throwing out runners, and Statcast rates his arm strength as slightly above average for a left fielder. But let me show you something. The table below shows the top 10 outfielders in arm value from 2022 to 2025. Kwan is the only left fielder there.

This is how you read the table. The first four columns show the run values, with first the total value and then a breakdown of how it was constructed: the value lost when runners advanced and got an extra base, then the value gained by the runners the fielder threw out, and finally the value gained by runners who held on and didn’t even try to advance. The three columns on the right show the percentage of times the runner attempted to advance and get an extra base, then Statcast’s estimated number of attempts based on the specific details of the play, and then the difference between the two. I’ve made the table sortable, so feel free to play around with it, but I’ve also marked every place where Kwan is at the top or bottom:

Yes, he’s very often at the top or bottom, and the common theme between these extreme traits is that runners don’t respect his arm the way they should. He has the fewest carries and has lost the most value due to runners taking extra base. He has the most value for discarded bishops. If you’re an outfielder, you can’t really decide how to build value (or not) with your arm. If you’re Aaron Judge and runners fear your arm, you accumulate passive value when they refuse to take the extra base time and time again. If you are Christian Jelichwho has a league-worst five-point gap between his actual and expected number of advance attempts, then you either have to kick out runners or watch your previously Gold Glove-caliber defense go up in flames.

Kwan is the only player on the list whose actual progress rate is a full point higher than his estimated progress rate. Even if you go all the way to the top 25, you will only find one other outfielder with an actual number of forays higher than the estimated number. As a reminder, this is a list of the 10 most valuable outfield weapons in baseball over a four-year period. Kwan has been at the top for two years in a row now, and he’s done it the hard way, throwing out runner after runner, and yet, in terms of respect from baserunners, he ranks only in the 29th percentile.

Or at least he did. Things have changed a bit lately. If you break things down by year, you’ll notice that Statcast didn’t like Kwan’s arm for the first two seasons of his career, and neither did the opposing runners, who attempted three points higher than the estimated number. However, over the past two years they have been a bit more cautious and went for the extra base less often than expected. Kwan finally deserves the slightest bit of respect, but judging by his still gaudy assist numbers, runners are owed a lot more: