{"id":19268,"date":"2025-07-24T00:38:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T00:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/19268\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T00:38:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T00:38:07","slug":"padres-phillies-showing-interest-in-steven-kwan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/19268\/","title":{"rendered":"Padres, Phillies Showing Interest In Steven Kwan"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Phillies and Padres are two of the many teams that have expressed interest in Steven Kwan<\/a>, reports<\/a> Jon Heyman of The New York Post. Both National League contenders are known to be looking for a left field upgrade.<\/p>\n

Kwan would be one of the top hitters on the market if the Guardians made him available. Heyman suggests that Cleveland is willing to consider offers but are understandably setting a high asking price. ESPN\u2019s Buster Olney<\/a> wrote on Tuesday that the Guardians are unlikely to pull the trigger on a Kwan trade. The two-time All-Star is under arbitration control for another two seasons. He\u2019s playing this year on a bargain $4.175MM salary.<\/p>\n

Phillies left fielders are hitting .190\/.302\/.339. Most of that falls on offseason signee Max Kepler<\/a>, who has not performed as expected on a $10MM deal. Kepler carries a .207\/.305\/.372 slash with 11 home runs in 328 plate appearances. He has also expressed some frustration<\/a> about the Phils shielding him from left-handed pitching, though it\u2019s not as if he has forced his way into the lineup with his production. It wouldn\u2019t be a surprise if the Phillies tried to move Kepler in a change-of-scenery trade.<\/p>\n

That might happen even if the Phils can\u2019t land a bigger bat. President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski shed some light on the team\u2019s thought process with outfield prospect Justin Crawford<\/a> on Monday (link via Matt Gelb of The Athletic<\/a>). Dombrowski indicated that the 21-year-old Crawford, who is hitting .326\/.406\/.424 with 29 stolen bases in Triple-A, is on the radar for an MLB promotion. That might wait until after the deadline, however, as the Phils don\u2019t want to call Crawford up only to option him back to the minors if they trade for an everyday outfielder.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one thing, if you\u2019re bringing Justin Crawford up at this point, he needs to play,\u201d Dombrowski told reporters. \u201cSo that\u2019s the main thing. So we need to kind of just sort out our own situation here and see when he comes up that he\u2019s going to be a guy that\u2019s playing all the time.\u201d Crawford could theoretically push\u00a0Brandon Marsh<\/a> out of center field even if the Phils were to acquire a left fielder. There\u2019d be a clearer path to plugging him into left while pushing Kepler to the bench or off the roster entirely if they don\u2019t land an external upgrade.<\/p>\n

San Diego planned to open the season with a\u00a0Jason Heyward<\/a>\/Connor Joe<\/a> left field platoon. Neither player made it on the roster through the end of June.\u00a0Gavin Sheets<\/a> has taken over as the left fielder. The lefty-hitting Sheets has had a strong year at the dish, batting .257\/.319\/.433 with 14 homers. He has hit a skid this month, though, and he profiles better defensively at first base or designated hitter.<\/p>\n

Kwan is one of the best all-around left fielders in the sport. He has won the Gold Glove in each of his first three big league seasons. He\u2019s been an average or better hitter in each year, including a .285\/.348\/.393 slash in 415 plate appearances this season. Kwan has walked more often than he has struck out in each of the past two seasons. He doesn\u2019t have huge power but has the high-OBP skillset that makes him an ideal leadoff hitter.<\/p>\n

As a small-market club, Cleveland tends to be broadly open to considering offers on any player aside from\u00a0Jos\u00e9 Ram\u00edrez<\/a>. Each of\u00a0Emmanuel Clase<\/a>,\u00a0Cade Smith<\/a> and\u00a0Shane Bieber<\/a> have come up in trade rumors as well. They\u2019re certainly not locked into selling, however. The Guardians have won three straight and eight of their past 10 to climb back to .500. They\u2019re within 2.5 games of a Wild Card position pending tonight\u2019s results. They have two more games against the Orioles before heading to Kansas City for a weekend series. They\u2019ll host the Rockies for three in their final set before the deadline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Phillies and Padres are two of the many teams that have expressed interest in Steven Kwan, reports…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,16402,462,82,486],"class_list":{"0":"post-19268","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-justin-crawford","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-steven-kwan"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}