this is my biggest worry. I think the objective for every batter in every AB should be very simple - don't make an out. Let the batter decide within his skill set what he can best do - can he hit a pitch out of the zone to get on, can he walk, can he drive the ball out of the park, can he slap it the other way? To me worrying about pitch location as a primary concern misses that what matters is what a guy can actually hit enough not to make an out - that area might not be the called zone for that batter. What matters for batters wrt strike zone is how much of it he can *defend*. Now maybe they are moving their idea in that direction or maybe not, but when Hinch first started espousing the control the zone mantra it was mostly directed at not swinging out of the zone, and maybe it was because when he arrived the tigers did have too many hackers, but it's just as important or more important that guys learn to defend (hit or foul off) pitches in the whole zone, and I never hear anything about any Tiger efforts in this direction and it is absolutely key. I hope everyone saw when they posted Harpers Red Hot Zone and it was 2/3 of entire K zone. That's how you get to be good hitter, by making it hard for a pitcher to get anything by you in the zone, not by being very selective *in* the zone which is the way the Tigers tend to talk about it.