CLEVELAND — When a Guardians hitter notches a single, he stands on first base, peers toward the dugout and flashes either two thumbs up or two thumbs down, depending on how hard he struck the baseball.Steven Kwan owns the league’s lowest hard-hit rate. When he reaches first base, he’s almost always displaying two thumbs down, so much so that it had him questioning the celebration choice earlier this year.The Guardians, though, have seen a lot more thumbs down from Kwan lately, and that, ironically, is a good thing. Thumbs up or thumbs down, they just want to see him on first base. The last few weeks, they have seen him there, as Kwan has resembled his old self, the pest with a penchant for perfectly placed low liners and bloops.So, is he officially back? Has the two-time All-Star fully emerged from his season-long funk? Kwan says he’s “cautiously optimistic,” but he’s not ready to declare anything.“People are really nice,” he said, “and they want to tell you, ‘You’re back.’ … It’s like, ‘Thanks, but it’s only been a couple weeks.'”He’s an admitted self-deprecator. When he burst into the big leagues in 2022 with 10 hits and seven walks in his first five games and when he flirted with a .400 batting average for a few days in July 2024, he downplayed each surge and suggested the Law of Averages would ultimately chase him down.He’s leaning on the same approach this month, refusing to completely exhale, even though he boasts a .400/.510/.556 slash line in 16 games in July, with 10 walks and only three strikeouts. Over the last month, he has reached base in 22 of 24 games.“Some of the singles are getting through, so that’s been really nice,” he said. “But probably also a little luck involved.”The slump that wouldn’t cease, Kwan said, challenged him mentally more than any other stretch in his career. He could excuse second-half struggles last year by pointing to lingering soreness in his right wrist and the destructive habits he developed with his swing mechanics because of it. He got off to a strong enough start last year — he was an All-Star — that even after a frigid finish, statistically speaking, he “had a cozy landing pad.”