{"id":544138,"date":"2026-01-29T14:50:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T14:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/544138\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T14:50:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T14:50:14","slug":"kansas-city-royals-news-who-will-lead-off-for-the-royals-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/544138\/","title":{"rendered":"Kansas City Royals news: Who will lead off for the Royals?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">If what we saw from Garcia in 2025 is real, and the Royals are betting on it with the contract extension, he fits as a pretty traditional leadoff hitter that blends old school with new school\u2026.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">I think the argument against it is that he\u2019s needed in the middle of the lineup too. If he\u2019s hitting first, that probably props Salvador Perez up to the fourth spot, which is maybe fine, but I would still like to see him hitting fifth or sixth as we saw often toward the end of last season. Putting someone else in the leadoff spot with Garcia hitting fourth, Perez fifth and then finishing the lineup helps make it look a whole lot deeper. But at the same time, that\u2019s giving fewer at bats to someone who might deserve more. It\u2019s easy to see why it\u2019s a bit of a conundrum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If what we saw from Garcia in 2025 is real, and the Royals are betting on it with&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2387],"tags":[5,936,2123,55,2596,2595,4,252,38557],"class_list":{"0":"post-544138","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kansas-city-royals","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-kansas","10":"tag-kansas-city","11":"tag-kansas-city-royals","12":"tag-kansascity","13":"tag-kansascityroyals","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-royals","16":"tag-royals-rumblings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115978949441602464","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}