As he flirts with .400, here are 7 Steven Kwan stats bound to blow your mind

Remember the last time Steven Kwan played an entire game and failed to record a base hit? Remember that, on May 2 in Houston, a mere seven weeks ago?

OK, sure, Kwan was sidelined for four weeks with a hamstring strain during that stretch, but all he’s done since he returned from the injured list — and, really, all he did before he landed on the injured list — is hit. And hit some more. And hit some more.

He’s flirting with the vaunted .400 mark, and not an eye-contact-from-across-the-bar type of flirting. There might be something here, something that can last. No big-leaguer has hit .400 since the ’40s. It’s not even fair to Kwan to surmise whether he can maintain this otherworldly pace for another few months. But he’s certainly positioning himself to have one of the more memorable hitting seasons in recent or semi-recent Cleveland history.

With a four-hit performance in Toronto on Sunday, Kwan boosted his average to .398. But the statistics that are difficult to wrap your head around extend far beyond his batting average. Let’s dig deeper.

His lead for a batting title is massive

Kwan is 70-for-176 this season, hitting .398, but he’s about 18 plate appearances short of qualifying for a batting title. He should make up enough ground in the next few weeks to join the leaderboards. And when he does, he’ll almost assuredly sit at the top in batting average.

Bobby Witt Jr. is the leader, at .327. For Kwan to fall below .327, he would have to go hitless in his next 39 at-bats. Thirty-nine!

And, well, that seems unlikely, considering …

Kwan’s longest hitless streak this season is seven plate appearances

The only time he’s had back-to-back hitless games: April 21 and 23 (with an off day in between). In the second game, he went 0-for-2 with a pair of walks.

Odds are, Kwan will cool off at some point. Can he hit .350 or better? Here’s the list of Cleveland players (minimum 400 plate appearances) to do that in the last 75 years:

Manny Ramirez, 2000: .351
Albert Belle, 1994: .357
Tito Francona, 1959: .363

The last Cleveland player to hit at least .365: Earl Averill, who hit .378 in 1936.

He’s the first player in 23 years with 70 hits in his first 43 games

Ichiro Suzuki is the only other player in the 21st century to tally that many base knocks in his first 43 games of a season. Kwan is one of seven players to accomplish the feat in the last 50 seasons.

The only player in franchise history, which dates to 1901, with more hits in his first 43 games of a season? Roy Weatherly, a 21-year-old rookie who totaled 73 hits in that span after being called up at the end of June during the 1936 season.

Kwan has more three-hit games than zero-hit games

Three-hit games: 11
Zero-hit games: seven

In one of those seven, he exited in the fourth inning with the aforementioned hamstring injury. Apparently, that injury gave him superpowers, because …

Since returning from the injured list, Kwan is batting .535 in 11 games

He’s 23-for-43, and he has six walks, four doubles and only three strikeouts.

In those 11 games:

Four-hit games: one
Three-hit games: three
Two-hit games: three
One-hit games: four
Zero-hit games: ha, yeah right

Kwan has three strikeouts in his last 125 plate appearances

Luis Arraez and Kwan boast the two best strikeout rates in the league, and there’s a huge gap between them and the rest of the field. They’re the only ones with a rate below than 10 percent.

To put Kwan’s recent stretch into perspective, Reds outfielder Will Benson, his close friend and former teammate, owns the league’s worst strikeout rate this season. Benson has 49 strikeouts in his last 125 plate appearances.

Overall, Kwan has 14 strikeouts in 196 plate appearances.

Kwan’s strikeout rate, per year:

2022: 9.4 percent
2023: 10.4 percent
2024: 7.1 percent

He has nearly as many three-hit games (11) as strikeouts (14) this season.

He’s on a record-setting-Ichiro-esque hit pace

Hits per game by Kwan in 2024: 1.6279
Hits per game by Ichiro in 2004: 1.6273

That’s the year Ichiro — one of Kwan’s idols — set a major-league record with 262 hits, surpassing George Sisler’s mark that stood for 84 years. Ichiro appeared in all but one game that season for the 63-99 Mariners and posted a .372/.414/.455 slash line, slapping singles across the diamond on a nightly basis.

He had only 37 extra-base hits.

His 225 singles smashed Willie Keeler’s record of 206, set in 1898. In fact, Ichiro owns three of the top six single-season singles totals, along with a pair of Keeler seasons, plus one from Lloyd Waner in 1927.

Another way to frame this: Singles accounted for 85.9 percent of Ichiro’s hits in 2004. Singles account for 77.1 percent of Kwan’s hits this season, which explains, in part, why his slugging percentage sits 90 points higher than Ichiro’s did 20 years ago.

Ichiro’s ability to sustain that hitting prowess across an entire season, without ever spending time on the injured list, was admirable. Kwan has another three and a half months to torment pitchers and then perhaps we can compare these seasons a bit more closely.

(Photo of Steven Kwan: Andy Lyons / Getty Images)