diff --git a/api/src/main/java/org/apache/iceberg/expressions/InclusiveMetricsEvaluator.java b/api/src/main/java/org/apache/iceberg/expressions/InclusiveMetricsEvaluator.java
index a3bb45553264..40695861a643 100644
--- a/api/src/main/java/org/apache/iceberg/expressions/InclusiveMetricsEvaluator.java
+++ b/api/src/main/java/org/apache/iceberg/expressions/InclusiveMetricsEvaluator.java
@@ -85,10 +85,17 @@ private class MetricsEvalVisitor extends BoundExpressionVisitor<Boolean> {
     private Map<Integer, ByteBuffer> upperBounds = null;
 
     private boolean eval(DataFile file) {
-      if (file.recordCount() <= 0) {
+      if (file.recordCount() == 0) {
         return ROWS_CANNOT_MATCH;
       }
 
+      if (file.recordCount() < 0) {
+        // we haven't implemented parsing record count from avro file and thus set record count -1
+        // when importing avro tables to iceberg tables. This should be updated once we implemented
+        // and set correct record count.
+        return ROWS_MIGHT_MATCH;
+      }
+
       this.valueCounts = file.valueCounts();
       this.nullCounts = file.nullValueCounts();
       this.lowerBounds = file.lowerBounds();