{"id":511824,"date":"2026-01-08T19:53:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T19:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/511824\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T19:53:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T19:53:10","slug":"guardians-avoid-arbitration-with-steven-kwan-agree-on-one-year-contract-for-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/511824\/","title":{"rendered":"Guardians avoid arbitration with Steven Kwan, agree on one-year contract for 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

CLEVELAND, Ohio \u2014 All-Star outfielder Steven Kwan avoided arbitration with the Guardians on Thursday, agreeing to a one-year contract worth a reported $7.725 million. Kwan had been the only remaining unsigned arbitration-eligible player on Cleveland\u2019s 40-man roster.<\/p>\n

Major League Baseball\u2019s deadline for teams and arb-eligible players to exchange salary figures was 1 p.m. The two sides can still negotiate a multiyear extension, but if those talks do not materialize, Kwan is safely in the fold for the upcoming season on the one-year deal.<\/p>\n

A four-time Gold Glove Award winner and two-time All-Star, Kwan batted .272 with 81 runs, 21 steals, 29 doubles, 11 home runs and a .768 OPS (on-base percentage + slugging percentage). Since his debut with the Guardians in 2022, Kwan is a .281 hitter with 346 runs, 36 home runs and 206 RBI. He has a career 3.7 WAR according to baseball-reference.com and a career .741 OPS.<\/p>\n

MLB insider Robert Murray reported the $7.725 million contract<\/a>, which came in below most projections for Kwan according to several sources. MLBTradeRumors.com had projected Kwan to earn $8.8 million in arbitration with Baseball Prospectus putting him at $9.175 million. <\/p>\n

Kwan\u2019s salary in his first arbitration year (2025) was $4.175 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND, Ohio \u2014 All-Star outfielder Steven Kwan avoided arbitration with the Guardians on Thursday, agreeing to a one-year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2380],"tags":[2514,5,135,51,2565,538,4,2515],"class_list":{"0":"post-511824","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-guardians","8":"tag-2514","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-cleveland","11":"tag-cleveland-guardians","12":"tag-clevelandguardians","13":"tag-guardians","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-wspix"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115861232265404152","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}