Steven Kwan, Nationals’ hot streak among fascinating MLB storylines

1. Psssst … anybody paying attention to what Steven Kwan has been up to?

The current MLB leader in batting average is Jurickson Profar at .323, which is an excellent number but hardly something that makes your socks roll up. But Profar will only be the leader for another few days because by then Kwan, who missed more than three weeks with a strained left hamstring, will have enough plate appearances to qualify. And perhaps then everyone will notice what Kwan is doing. Because when people finally see Kwan atop that leaderboard, their eyebrows will go shooting northward.

That’s to say: Did you realize Kwan is batting .396? Yes, it’s just 46 games and 209 plate appearances, but jeez, .396 is .396.

He has a 14-game hitting streak and is playing his usual Gold Glove defense in left field. (He has two of those awards already, if you forgot.) He has changed the entire Guardians offense; remember, he only hit .268 last year, which, watching him now, seems impossible. Also remember, too, how hard it is for anyone to hit for a high average anymore. MLB’s league-wide average is .241. When George Brett hit .390 back in 1980, the league average was .265. Kwan is lapping everyone. He has been particularly bonkers banana pants in June, hitting .480 this month. .480! Forget .400 watch: Why aren’t we on .500 watch? When Kwan finally gets enough plate appearances in a week or so, perhaps we will be.

2. The best Nats team since that Nats team

The Nats have, famously, struggled ever since they won the World Series in 2019. They’ve finished last in the NL East every year since then. But the moves they’ve been putting together are beginning to pay off, and the Nats are surprisingly just a half-game out of an NL Wild Card spot. The team’s best player has been CJ Abrams, who was the centerpiece of the Juan Soto trade and has now firmly established himself as one of the better shortstops in the National League. But the Nats are getting contributions from all sorts of young players, many of whom are starring on defense, from center fielder Jacob Young (24) to Abrams (23) to Luis García Jr. (24). Their two best pitchers are both in their 20s: Jake Irvin (27) and MacKenzie Gore (25) who, on the right night, can resemble a top-of-the-rotation ace.

They’re also getting surprising contributions from veterans, the sort that can put your team over the top, like closer Kyle Finnegan, magical journeyman Ildemaro Vargas (having the best year of his career at 32) and, most impressively, Jesse Winker, who was an All-Star in 2021, struggled mightily in ’22, was hurt throughout ’23 and is now back to his top form at the age of 30 in ’24. (He’s done all that for four teams, a different team each year.) Those vets might have been initially thought of as midseason trade bait, but now, well, they’re the clubhouse leaders of a team with a legitimate shot at making the playoffs.

More to the point, the future looks bright. And the present doesn’t look half bad either.

3. Who the heck is going to pitch for the Orioles?

We all know, and have known for a while now, that the Orioles can hit: Their hitting is in fact a thing you can count on continuing to get better and better. (Remember, top overall prospect Jackson Holliday will be back up at some point — this year or next — and when he figures it out, look out.) But what had everyone so excited about the O’s heading into 2024 was their pitching. With the addition of Corbin Burnes, they had a trio atop their rotation of Burnes, Grayson Rodriguez and Kyle Bradish (who, lest you forget, finished fourth in AL Cy Young voting last year), as well as strong depth behind them in John Means, Tyler Wells and Dean Kremer.

Baseball people love to say, “You can never have too much pitching,” and Orioles fans are almost certainly nodding in agreement as they read this.

The Trade Deadline is still over a month away, but it’s not entirely clear how the Orioles can wait that long. White Sox starter Garrett Crochet is an obvious target, though you can totally see someone like his teammate Erick Fedde, who arguably has been even better, coming as well. The question, as always, is how aggressive the O’s are willing to be.

This is a question not just for this year but the next: After all, Burnes is hitting free agency in just a few months from now. Bradish, Means and Wells won’t be a part of next year’s rotation either. (This is an argument for both Crochet and Fedde: They’d be in the 2025 rotation as well.) For a team like the Orioles, who have so much young offensive talent, there isn’t a fan who doesn’t have a reasonable expectation of a World Series appearance at some point in next five years. But you can’t help but feel like they’re right back where they were last year: Heavy on position players, low on pitching and trying to figure out, once again, how to balance the scales.

4. The difference between the Yankees and the Dodgers, as seen through the prism of superstars’ wrists

The Yankees have the best record in baseball and — if you’re the sort of sicko like me already keeping an eye out for home-field advantage in the World Series — are four games up on the Dodgers. But if you’re looking for a fundamental difference in how the teams are constructed, and how the Dodgers have so much more room for error than the Yankees do, look at the wrists of their superstars, and the reactions to their injuries — or lack thereof.

On Sunday, Mookie Betts suffered a left-hand fracture from a painful hit-by-pitch. The injury will keep Betts out for six to eight weeks, which is bad, for the Dodgers and for baseball fans who love watching him play. But one thing it didn’t do? Make anyone the least bit concerned about Los Angeles winning its division and likely getting a first-round bye in the postseason. (For that matter, Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s strained rotator cuff also didn’t make anyone concerned about it.)

The worry about Betts’ injury is only whether he’ll be back to full strength by October, not whether the Dodgers will still be in ideal position when October arrives.

The Yankees, though? When Aaron Judge took a pitch off his left hand Tuesday, he was fortunate in that it didn’t break; he was in fact back in the lineup two days later. But that collective gasp when it happened among Yankees fans was far more terrified than Dodgers fans when Betts was hit. That’s because, for all their success so far, the Yanks would be in a far more precarious position if they lost Judge than the Dodgers losing Betts.

The Yankees have had everything working for them so far this year; that’s why their record is so good, after all. But they’re far less capable of overcoming a massive injury than the Dodgers (or even, one could argue, the Orioles) are. It may remain perfect for the Yankees the rest of the way like it (mostly) has been so far. But if it doesn’t, they’re in trouble. The Dodgers? The Dodgers are going to be fine even if something else goes wrong. That’s the difference.

5. Who is the greatest living ballplayer?

When was the last time we didn’t consider Willie Mays the greatest living ballplayer? Some would have made an argument for Hank Aaron for a time, but it feels like the last time we had another serious contender for the Greatest Living Ballplayer title was maybe 2002, when Ted Williams died. In the wake of Mays’ passing on Tuesday, the question can’t help but arise: Who’s the greatest living ballplayer now?

Using Baseball Reference WAR, there are only three living ballplayers in the top 18 of all time … and none of the three are in the Hall of Fame. Barry Bonds is fourth, Roger Clemens is eighth and Alex Rodriguez is 16th. Now, the reasons they’re not in the Hall of Fame are well-documented, and I suspect those are the same reasons people have been hesitant to include them in the Greatest Living Ballplayer discussions. It’s why, when this conversation has come up the last couple of days, you’ve heard many mentions of Albert Pujols, Rickey Henderson, Greg Maddux or even Mike Schmidt.

Personally, while I don’t have much use for the so-called “character clause” for the Hall of Fame because of the way it is inconsistently applied, Hall of Fame voters can at least make a case for it when submitting their ballots. It does, after all, exist. But there is no such clause for an unofficial title like Greatest Living Ballplayer. If you still want to exclude anyone who has been associated with PEDs, that’s your prerogative; I’d argue Henderson is a logical pick if you’re doing so. But I wonder if this will be a way to get Bonds — who remains the best player I’ve ever seen in person, and I watched a lot of Albert Pujols’ games — back in the conversation, at least in terms of historical greatness.

Fun Series of the Weekend:

Braves at Yankees
I feel like we’ve been picking the Yankees in this spot a lot lately, but jeez, they’ve got the best record in baseball and they’ve had series against the Dodgers, Red Sox and Braves on consecutive weekends — you kind of have to choose them. (They get the Blue Jays next weekend. We promise not to pick them then.) They’re catching the Braves at the wrong time. After a five-game losing streak had everyone panicking, the Braves have won six of their past seven games and have stabilized after a post-Ronald Acuña Jr. injury dip. They begin the series with Chris Sale on the mound, who, as we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, is stealthily putting together a potential Cy Young case. (He famously has never won one.) We won’t see Gerrit Cole this series, alas. But if you squint, you can pretend it’s the 1996 or 1999 World Series.