Will the Guardians Trade Steven Kwan? Why Cleveland’s Offseason Just Got Complicated
Steven Kwan is going to be one of the most talked-about names of the winter. The problem is that nobody knows if there will be a winter.
MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand named Kwan one of 11 offseason trade candidates on Thursday, and the logic behind it is not complicated. As Feinsand put it, “with only one year remaining until free agency and no extension seemingly in sight, Cleveland could look to move Kwan to bring back younger, more controllable talent.”
That is the Guardians’ entire operating manual in one sentence. Cleveland does not pay market rate for players entering their thirties. Cleveland converts them into years of control.
Kwan is not alone on these lists. He came in 14th on MLB Trade Rumors’ top 40 trade candidates for the offseason, third among outfielders behind Boston’s Jarren Duran and Wilyer Abreu. The Astros, Giants, Pirates, Mets, Phillies, Royals and Tigers have all been floated as fits.
That is a wide net, and it makes sense. Kwan is a four-time Gold Glove winner, taking the award every year from 2022 through 2025, and a contact-first left-handed bat who does not strike out. Every contender in baseball has a use for that profile.
The financials are friendly too. Kwan is making $7.725 million in 2026 and is arbitration eligible one more time next winter before hitting free agency after the 2027 season. An acquiring team gets two full seasons at an arbitration price. That is real value in a market where an average outfielder costs $20 million a year.
Now the complication, and it is a big one.
The collective bargaining agreement expires at 11:59 p.m. on December 1, 2026. MLBPA interim executive director Bruce Meyer has told players to expect a lockout the moment it does. Owners have proposed a salary cap for the first time since 1994, the union has no interest, and the two sides are nowhere close.
A lockout freezes everything. No trades, no free agency, no team activity until a new deal is signed. The last one, in the winter of 2021-22, ran 99 days and pushed back the start of the season.
So the Guardians have roughly a month between the end of the World Series and December 1 to move Kwan if they want to move him at all. Every front office in baseball is staring at the same narrow window, which means the offseason gets compressed into a frantic November and then goes dark.
Here is where I land. Cleveland should trade him, and the timing argues for doing it fast.
Kwan’s 2026 has been a step back. He is hitting around .265, well off the standard he set in his first four seasons, and the underlying contact quality has not been what it was. His value is not going up. A team with one arbitration year of control left on a 29-year-old coming off a down season is holding a depreciating asset, and Cleveland has never been sentimental about that math.
The counterargument is legitimate: trading your best defensive outfielder and one of your only reliable on-base threats does not make the 2027 Guardians better. Cleveland has been competitive with this roster. Gutting it for prospects while the AL Central stays winnable is not free.
But an extension is not happening, the lockout clock is real, and Kwan will be a rental by next July if nothing changes. Waiting means selling into a deadline market with less leverage.
Move him in November. That is the whole window.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
