The American League Championship Series has put two of baseball’s most unusual table-setters in the same October frame. Cleveland’s Steven Kwan and Tampa Bay’s Chandler Simpson do not win with thunder in their bats. They win by putting the barrel where the ball is, again and again, then letting line drives, grounders and pressure do the rest.
Game 3 is scheduled for Thursday at 1 p.m. ET, with TBS, truTV, UniMas and HBO Max carrying the broadcast. It offers another look at two hitters who finished the regular season as the game’s batting-average leaders after the All-Star break.
Two contact hitters at the front of the line
| Player | Club | Batting average after All-Star break | Post-break wRC+ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steven Kwan | Guardians | .353 | 155 |
| Chandler Simpson | Rays | .344 | 107 |
Among 164 qualified Major League hitters, Kwan’s .353 average over the final 62 games led the way, with Simpson close behind at .344. Kwan was the more complete offensive force in that span, while Simpson’s value was checked somewhat by a 3.1% walk rate. Still, a hitter does not accidentally run that kind of average for two and a half months.
Neither man resembles the current prototype of a hitter trying to drive the ball out in front and toward the pull side. The league’s average bat speed was 72.1 mph in 2026. Kwan averaged 62.4 mph, the slowest figure among 206 qualified hitters and the lowest by any qualified player in a season since bat-tracking information became public following the 2023 All-Star break. Simpson checked in at 65.1 mph.
For perspective, Statcast classifies a swing of at least 75 mph as a fast swing. Major League hitters batted .308 and slugged .613 on those swings this season. Kwan produced only two such swings all year; Simpson had three. Tampa Bay slugger Junior Caminero, the game’s fastest bat swinger, recorded eight fast swings in ALCS Game 1 alone, including on a 111.2 mph RBI single in the first inning.
How Kwan and Simpson make their own kind of damage
Contact is the foundation. Kwan’s swing-and-miss rate was 8.2%, matching his career-best single-season mark and tying Luis Arraez for the lowest among qualified hitters. Simpson was third at 10.8%.
More importantly, they do not merely nick pitches into play. They consistently strike the ball on the sweet portion of the barrel. Kwan led all qualified hitters in squared-up rate per swing, while Simpson ranked third, behind Arraez. That skill helps them turn modest bat speed into playable exit velocity and, often enough, a clean base hit.
Their shared strength is bat control, but their plans at the plate take different roads.
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Simpson’s game is built around his elite running speed. He put the ball on the ground more frequently than every qualified hitter except one, and his 175 hits traveled an average of just 106 feet. That was the shortest average hit distance in a Statcast-era season by a player with at least 100 hits.
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His average attack angle was three degrees, among baseball’s lowest. The barrel arrives on a path suited to ground balls and low liners, and Simpson allows pitches to get deep before contact more often than all but four qualified hitters.
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He also had the second-lowest launch-angle sweet-spot rate in the majors, meaning relatively few balls came off his bat in the 8-to-32-degree range generally associated with extra-base damage. That is no accident. Simpson is trying to create difficult plays, then beat them out.
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Kwan, whose sprint speed sits around league average, has a different need. He cannot depend on infield choppers the way Simpson can. His launch-angle sweet-spot rate ranked fifth in baseball, reflecting a line-drive-oriented approach rather than a ground-ball one.
Kwan’s season turned when he returned to his strengths
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During the offseason, Kwan worked with heavier bats in an effort to build speed through the zone and add more impact. He had pursued additional slugging for several years.
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That pursuit did not pay off early in 2026. Through June 30, Kwan was batting .212 with a 78 wRC+, placing him among the eight least productive qualified hitters. His bat speed still ranked last in the game, and he had only 24 hard-hit balls—12 fewer than the next-lowest qualified player.
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After that point, Kwan leaned back into the style that has carried him before: precision, patience within the at-bat and a willingness to use the opposite field. His production climbed from the bottom eight to the top eight among qualified hitters.
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His barrel direction shifted from three degrees toward the pull side in March and April to four degrees toward the opposite field by September. By October, he was positioned nine inches deeper in the batter’s box than he had been in April.
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The adjustment allowed Kwan to track the ball longer and meet it farther back, giving him room to send pitches the other way with the kind of compact, controlled contact that defines his game.
Some of Kwan’s surge was aided by results on balls in play, but the movement patterns tell their own story. He did not suddenly become a power hitter. He became more fully himself.
That is the October contrast running through this series. Caminero and other modern sluggers can change a scoreboard with one violent swing. Kwan and Simpson work a different corner of the game, where the ball is put in play, defenders are forced to react and a single can become a problem before anyone has time to settle in.
It is an old-fashioned look with modern tracking data behind it. For Cleveland and Tampa Bay, it has become a very timely one.
