The optimist’s case for Jonathan India

Last year, the player I was the most optimistic about bouncing back from a tough season was Maikel Garcia. I didn’t foresee him taking a huge step forward, but you could see heading in 2025 that there were still lots of positives in his batted-ball profile despite the poor results. Garcia worked hard on his swing and made the changes necessary to unlock the potential that was present. Still, it was nice to see the ingredients that some of us thought were there could lead to a more productive season from Garcia than we had seen so far.

I don’t think there is as obvious a candidate for a bounce back in 2026 as there was last year with Garcia, but that’s a pretty lame article to write. Instead, I’m going to test my luck and argue that Jonathan India will be the Maikel Garcia of this year, at least when it comes to hitting well at the plate.

India needs to regain his form at the plate even more than Garcia did last year. Garcia finished with 1.2 fWAR in 2024 despite hitting 31% below league average, thanks to his above-average defense and excellent baserunning. Garcia turned in an excellent defensive and above-average base running campaign in 2025, which combined with his big step forward at the plate led to 5.6 fWAR and his first All-Star selection. India, meanwhile, was below replacement level in the field and running the bases. The second baseman hit just 11% below league average last year, but overall contributed a -0.3 fWAR.

Ideally, India’s defense will improve this season as he focuses solely on second base rather than bouncing between second, third, and left field, but he’s unlikely to become a defensive whiz at his age. So he really needs to produce at an above-average level to justify the Royals tendering him a contract this year. I’m not a Michael Massey believer, but there’s no arguing that Massey would be a better option in the dirt than India. The 29-year-old will also be a free agent at the end of the 2026 season, so there’s even more pressure for him to take a big leap forward with his bat.

There are other soft factors besides India being in a contract year that lead me to betting on India improving his performance. As previously mentioned, the Royals unsuccessfully tried to make India an outfielder last year, which could have had him focusing more on improving in left field instead of fixing his swing. He switched teams and cities, which is plenty to get adjusted to as a person. He went from a bandbox in Great American Ballpark to the spacious confines of Kauffman Stadium, which might have gotten into his head as a hitter. India took a 99-mile-per-hour fastball off the helmet at the start of the year last season. Thankfully, the pitch was non-concussive, but I wouldn’t blame India if he was just a touch slower in his reaction time while hitting after that moment.

The two biggest factors for why I like India to bounce back, however, are more analytical and similar to why Garcia seemed like a good candidate to rebound last year. First, he has an excellent eye and makes good contact, which are great and generally repeatable skills to have as a hitter. Second, India had a pretty obvious but seemingly fixable weakness as a hitter last season, which I, as a jabroni, was able to notice when looking through his Statcast data. If I’m able to see what he needs to improve, then the Royals and India are certainly able to see that as well and hopefully have him make the necessary changes to his swing to improve this year.

I wrote an article last May about India’s approach at the plate, and how refreshing it was to see as a Royals fan despite his overall struggles. That approach never left him, even though he didn’t hit well in 2025. India finished second on the team in walks (behind Maikel Garcia,) and his chase rate remained elite in 2025. The second baseman finished in the 97th percentile in chase rate, the best figure on the team.

India also makes excellent contact when he swings the bat. He had an above-average contact percentage, whether he swung at pitches inside the strike zone or outside the strike zone. His 82.5% contact percentage was well above the league-average mark of 76.9%, and placed him in the 78th percentile among all qualified hitters. India was less than one percentage point behind Vinnie Pasquantino in overall contact percentage, which surprised me when I looked through the data. Garcia was ahead of them both and in truly elite company when it comes to making contact, but India’s ability to make contact was still very good. Combine that with an elite batting eye, and you’ve got some quality ingredients to have a good hitter.

So what went wrong last year? In my view, India’s issue was the opposite of Garcia’s in 2024. Garcia hit too many groundballs that year, and needed to raise his launch angle to unlock his potential, which ended up happening. India’s launch angle in 2025, particularly on pitches at the top of the zone, was actually too high. His average launch angle of 17.1 degrees was the highest of his career and was a power hitter’s launch angle. Vinnie Paquantino had a 16.3 degree average launch angle in 2025, while Maikel Garcia had a 9.7 degree average launch angle.

The high launch angle contributed to India hitting too many flyballs and not enough line drives, which brought his BABIP to a career-low .279. India needs to stay on top of pitches at the top of the zone better in 2026; if he can make that change, he should post better hitting numbers this season.

Let’s look at some data from Baseball Savant, which shows us India’s launch angle in 2025 in certain parts of the strike zone:

As a reminder, 10-25 degrees is an ideal launch angle for line drives, while 25-35 degrees is a good launch angle for home run hitters. India had a great line drive swing in the middle third of the plate, but his approach in the upper-middle and upper-inside part of the plate led to a lot of flyballs. That might work as an approach if India had more power, but he’s an on-base guy and needs to focus more on hitting line drives. For India, a launch angle average of 30 and 33 degrees, respectively, is too high, and we would expect the results to be too many easy flyballs. That was the result for India last season, which comes into pretty clear focus when you break down results by their location in the strike zone.

The second baseman hit a fair number of flyballs in the middle of the zone, but still managed to hit enough line drives to get quality results. In the upper part of the zone, however, he was below average on line drive percentage, which is not surprising given his launch angle.

The results of too many flyballs and not enough line drives at the top of the zone were not good for India, which the Baseball Savant charts help make obvious.

India hit way too many pop-ups when he was challenged at the upper part of the strike zone. Popouts are almost always outs, which led to India’s terrible BABIP, batting average and expected batting average in the top third of the zone.

This pop-up issue has not always been a problem for India. His 2024 launch angle up in the zone was more line drive oriented:

Which led to more line drives, which we can see below:

Unsurprisingly, more line drives led to less pop outs, which led to better results as a hitter for India.

I’m not qualified to diagnose what was different about India’s swing this season and what needs to change, but the fact that he’s hit a lot of line drives at the top of the strike zone before tells us that he should be able to do it again. I’m trusting that the Royals’ hitting coaches, along with the second baseman himself, can figure out what he needs to do to flatten his swing out at the top of the strike zone. This should lead to him getting on base more often, which is exactly what the Royals offense needs from him.

India is at a crossroads. If he gets off to a slow start, the calls to replace him with Massey or someone else are going to come quickly and loudly. I’m willing to bet that the Royals and India are able to see what went wrong last season and get things fixed. If the second baseman is not popping out as much this year, the rest of his hitting profile makes him a great candidate to have a much better 2026 season than 2025.