As someone that consumes a LOT of baseball related content, I can almost guarantee you that Kwan actually is well aware of his stats, and consciously thinking about sticking to his winning batting...
Kwan swings less than league average when he's ahead, and more than league average when he's behind. Again, I don't think he's consciously going up there and thinking about any of this. At least I hope not. It's just something his brain has conditioned his body to do.
As someone that consumes a LOT of baseball related content, I can almost guarantee you that Kwan actually is well aware of his stats, and consciously thinking about sticking to his winning batting strategy before he gets up to the plate. There are people on teams whose entire jobs are to keep track of and analyze all the stats, and let the players know their stats between innings and before/after games in the team meetings; Pitching coaches who keep track of the velocity, spin rates, and movement stats for all their team's pitches, and batting coaches who do similar on the opposite side. And those various coaches also analyze the other teams stats as well, to try to give their own players a leg up (e.g. by letting their batters know the types and frequency of pitches the opposing pitcher throws, is most likely to lead off with, throws more often when ahead/behind vs lefties/righties, etc, etc, etc). Baseball, more than any other sport, is all about the statistics, and all professional teams take full advantage of that fact.
If you want to see some of that in action, I highly recommend watching Trevor Bauer's recent videos from his record breaking season pitching in Mexico for the Diablos. Those videos offer insights into high-level professional baseball like no others I've ever seen before, including a ton of "how the sausage is made" stuff like I mentioned above. E.g. Trevor regularly consults with his pitching coach in between innings to ask about the stats for various key pitches during the inning so he can then adjust his strategy for the next inning based on those stats. So if, for example, his fastball isn't getting enough velocity, or his breaking balls aren't getting enough vertical/horizontal movement, he might reduce the frequency he throws them until he gets them performing as expected again.
p.s. Related fun fact which most people might not be aware of, Nate Silver (founder of FiveThirtyEight) originally got his start as a Baseball analyst and became relatively famous in that field for having created PECOTA, a remarkably accurate MLB player performance forecasting algorithm... which is what eventually led him into trying to do the same for election forecasting.
A short video on the curious case of Steven Kwan: despite having bottom of the league stats in bat speed and swing %, he is remarkably productive. Why?
A short video on the curious case of Steven Kwan: despite having bottom of the league stats in bat speed and swing %, he is remarkably productive. Why?
A short video on the curious case of Steven Kwan: despite having bottom of the league stats in bat speed and swing %, he is remarkably productive. Why?
As someone that consumes a LOT of baseball related content, I can almost guarantee you that Kwan actually is well aware of his stats, and consciously thinking about sticking to his winning batting strategy before he gets up to the plate. There are people on teams whose entire jobs are to keep track of and analyze all the stats, and let the players know their stats between innings and before/after games in the team meetings; Pitching coaches who keep track of the velocity, spin rates, and movement stats for all their team's pitches, and batting coaches who do similar on the opposite side. And those various coaches also analyze the other teams stats as well, to try to give their own players a leg up (e.g. by letting their batters know the types and frequency of pitches the opposing pitcher throws, is most likely to lead off with, throws more often when ahead/behind vs lefties/righties, etc, etc, etc). Baseball, more than any other sport, is all about the statistics, and all professional teams take full advantage of that fact.
If you want to see some of that in action, I highly recommend watching Trevor Bauer's recent videos from his record breaking season pitching in Mexico for the Diablos. Those videos offer insights into high-level professional baseball like no others I've ever seen before, including a ton of "how the sausage is made" stuff like I mentioned above. E.g. Trevor regularly consults with his pitching coach in between innings to ask about the stats for various key pitches during the inning so he can then adjust his strategy for the next inning based on those stats. So if, for example, his fastball isn't getting enough velocity, or his breaking balls aren't getting enough vertical/horizontal movement, he might reduce the frequency he throws them until he gets them performing as expected again.
See also: Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game and Sabermetrics.
p.s. Related fun fact which most people might not be aware of, Nate Silver (founder of FiveThirtyEight) originally got his start as a Baseball analyst and became relatively famous in that field for having created PECOTA, a remarkably accurate MLB player performance forecasting algorithm... which is what eventually led him into trying to do the same for election forecasting.
A short video on the curious case of Steven Kwan: despite having bottom of the league stats in bat speed and swing %, he is remarkably productive. Why?
Because he's a Steve.