{"id":2286442,"date":"2026-02-17T22:15:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T22:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2286442"},"modified":"2026-02-17T22:15:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T22:15:19","slug":"royals-doubled-down-on-jonathan-india-and-the-pressure-is-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/royals-doubled-down-on-jonathan-india-and-the-pressure-is-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Royals doubled down on Jonathan India \u2014 and the pressure is on"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Jonathan India appeared to be a big addition for the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/mlb\/kansas-city-royals\">Kansas City Royals<\/a> not too long ago.<\/p>\n<p>The trade of Brady Singer to the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/mlb\/cincinnati-reds\">Cincinnati Reds<\/a> to acquire India was supposed to bolster Kansas City&#8217;s batting order.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, India struggled mightily.<\/p>\n<p>But despite that, the Royals signed India to an $8 million contract for the 2026 MLB season to see if he can get back to a better place.<\/p>\n<p>There was a question of whether India would be non-tendered, but the Royals decided to bring him back after a down year. India hit .233 with a .346 slugging percentage in 2025 across 136 games played. He hit just nine homers and didn&#8217;t steal a single base.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The second base job is his to lose, but it\u2019s still a prove-it year for India, not just to put his first season with the Royals behind him, but also because he\u2019ll be a free agent at season\u2019s end,&#8221; <a target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mlb.com\/news\/mlb-players-with-most-to-prove-in-2026-spring-training\">MLB.com&#8217;s Anne Rogers wrote<\/a> in a new article on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MORE:\u00a0<\/strong><a target=\"_blank\" target=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/mlb\/pittsburgh-pirates\/news\/theres-one-question-pirates-phenom-konnor-griffin-needs-answer\/e52ced688826dcf440f9eae9\">There&#8217;s one question Pirates phenom Konnor Griffin needs to answer<\/a><\/p>\n<p>India is really an X-factor in whether the Royals sink or swim this season.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;ve got proven standouts in Bobby Witt Jr., Vinnie Pasquantino, Maikel Garcia and Salvador Perez.<\/p>\n<p>The outfield, on the other hand, is almost an entire question mark.<\/p>\n<p>India falls somewhere in the middle. He has been a solid hitter in MLB before, but he wasn&#8217;t in his first season with the Royals.<\/p>\n<p>If he can lift his game back to better levels, India could help Kansas City contend in the AL Central Division. But if not, it&#8217;ll be bad news for the futures of both India and the Royals.<\/p>\n<h2>More MLB news:<\/h2>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.sportingnews.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jonathan India appeared to be a big addition for the Kansas City Royals not too long ago. The trade of Brady Singer to the Cincinnati Reds to acquire India was supposed to bolster Kansas City&#8217;s batting order. Instead, India struggled mightily. But despite that, the Royals signed India to an $8 million contract for the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2286443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2286442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Royals-doubled-down-on-Jonathan-India-\u2014-and-the-pressure.webp.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2286442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2286442"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2286442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2286444,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2286442\/revisions\/2286444"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2286443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2286442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2286442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2286442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}