In "Hitters by Zones," Jeremy Greenhouse of BaseballAnalysts.com broke the plate area down into nine zones, scaling the vertical component of the pitch for the batter’s height. He decided to restrict the sample to only 2009 pitches at which the batter swung, so keep the sample size in mind. He offered crude charts showing how batters fare when swinging and gave the Top 5 and Bottom 5 for each category.
Not surprisingly, Dioner Navarro was the WORST in baseball in 2009 at successfully hitting pitches right down the dick:
Middle-Middle
Name | Runs | Swings |
---|---|---|
Prince Fielder | 30.7 | 249 |
Mark Teixeira | 29.9 | 294 |
Ryan Braun | 29.6 | 281 |
Adam Dunn | 25.3 | 294 |
Andre Ethier | 25.2 | 323 |
Augie Ojeda | -10.9 | 128 |
Nick Punto | -11.3 | 191 |
Luis Rodriguez | -11.8 | 129 |
Ty Wigginton | -12.0 | 219 |
Dioner Navarro | -13.1 | 174 |
This is clearly the most telling list (from the article) in terms of quality of hitter. To be successful swinging the bat, you have to be able to hit the ball pitched down the middle. As you can see, some of the best hitters in baseball are at the top, and our very own Dioner is at the bottom. It would be nice to see the numbers from 2008 (when he was "good") as well, but for now we'll just have to say that Dioner couldn't have hit water if he fell out of a boat at sea in 2009.
FULL ARTICLE: http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2010/02/hitters_by_zone.php