Do Short Hitters Own Top of the Zone?

Testing a Jim Deshaies statement from a recent Cubs broadcast

I was watching the first game of the Cubs vs Brewers twin bill on Monday afternoon when an announcer’s quip sparked my curiosity. Five foot eight Brewers third baseman Caleb Durbin roped a double on a letters high fastball. The ball was up and in on the hands, and Durbin impressively turned on it for a liner at 102 MPH EV. That’s when Cubs’ color commentator Jim Deshaies noted a pattern he's noticed overtime. Admitting it may be more anecdotal for the former big league hurler, he stated that short hitters are always the best high ball hitters.

It made me wonder how much truth there is to that statement. In this age of analytics, anybody can know virtually anything about anyone at any time. Deshaies stopped pitching in 1995, but thinks he noticed this without data over his career as a player and a commentator. 30 years following his retirement, in 2025, someone like me can conjure up enough data to test the tangibility of this theory.

To start, I’m going to search and list the shortest position players in the MLB, then I will look at heat maps to see if I can draw any inferences about where they like to do damage in the zone.

The first player I will look at required no Google search to think of. Five foot seven Jose Altuve, one of the most decorated second basemen in the history of the game. I’ve got a feeling he will be one of many second basemen present in this research.

Due to the generalness and lack of timeframe relevance of the claim, I will start by looking at the entire career of Altuve. Here is his slugging% per pitch by zone.

Not much indicating that he excels in hitting the high ones. Looks like he prefers the ball right down the middle, with some partiality to the middle-in pitch. I might come back to Altuve here once we start to recognize some patterns. For now, let’s move to the left side of the batters box and check out the career heat map showing SLG% by zone for Mets outfielder Cedric Mullins, another short king at five foot seven inches.

Mullins has substantially more cool blue shading towards the top of the zone. He directly counters the claim that short hitters do well against the high ball. Not a great start for the claim of Deshaies.

Let’s go back to Altuve. The heat map I showed for him may not be telling the whole story. That was just the SLG per pitch, which might not fully encapsulate what it means to be a good high ball hitter, which ultimately isn’t as black and white (or blue and red) as I made it seem.

What constitutes being a good high ball hitter? Is a good high ball hitter someone who fights off well located high balls for singles, or does damage up in the zone? In order to find out what a good high ball hitter looks like in the major league scope, I did a search for leaders in barrels in the upper third of the strike zone and the shadow area above it. The locations of the zones included can be seen here:

That’s the area I believe can be universally agreed upon as reasonably in range for “high ball” categorization. That being established, I searched for who has the most barrels in those locations. The leader? Jose Altuve.

DeShaies is on the board with a point there. Eight home runs in that zone is certainly enough evidence to call him a good high ball hitter. At five foot six, he is also very short. There’s evidence to the theory after all.

Now, the names that follow Altuve on this list will give us an idea of how much of an anomaly Altuve’s high ball hitting competency is. The following names with heights:

2. Pete Alonso, 6-3, 9 high-ball barrels

3. Seiya Suzuki, 6-0, 9 high-ball barrels

4. Pete Crow-Armstrong, 6-0, 9 high-ball barrels

5. Randy Arozarena, 5-11, 8 high-ball barrels

6. Kerry Carpenter, 6-1, 7 high-ball barrels

7. Kyle Schwarber, 6-0, 7 high-ball barrels

8. Yainer Diaz, 6-0, 7 high-ball barrels

9. Jordan Beck, 6-3, 6 high-ball barrels

10. Brandon Lowe, 5-10, 6 high-ball barrels

Also tied with six high ball barrels is Juan Soto (6-2), Bryan Reynolds (6-3), Max Muncy (6-0) and Jackson Merrill (6-3).

After Altuve, the remainder of that list is admittedly not very indicative of short hitters being the most apt to hit high pithes. The average major league hitter height is around six foot even. I’d consider a short hitter to be 5-11 or lower.

To further the research here, I changed the search parameters. I now searched for extra base hits in the same locations. Altuve led with 12, followed by 5-11 Josh Naylor with 10, and then Luis Arraez, who is the interesting case I’ll get into.

We all know Luis Arraez can hit the ball wherever it’s thrown. He owns a sub 3% strikeout rate, and no that’s not a typo. What’s interesting is he doesn’t have many extra base hits, but 1/4 of them come on high balls, including above the zone. He is five foot ten. Is that evidence? I’ll let you decide.

I’m going to use the extra base hit search but expand the timeframe to the last five seasons including 2025. Here’s the list:

5-11 and under: Altuve, Naylor, Jose Ramirez, Marcus Semien, Luis Arraez,

Tall hittes: Schwarber, Reynolds, Soto,

Now, I’m going to use this search for the final time, opening up the timeframe as far as Statcast will allow it, which includes seasons from 2008 on.

Most of the hitters on this list are “tall” hitters (6-0 or over). Only Altuve, Brian Dozier, and Adrian Beltre are short enough to qualify. I will also note that Dustin Pedroia (five foot eight king), is tied with Bryce Harper at 72 high ball extra base hits. Nonetheless, Deshaies theory is losing momentum.

There is one more way I’d like to test this theory though. The searches I did favored cumulative counting stats, which could be skewed in favor of hitters who have had more plate appearances or high balls thrown to them (ie more chances). I will search for wOBA now to see if anything changes. This list is ranked by wOBA on high pitches since 2008, with a minimum qualifying threshold of 100 plate appearances.

That’s almost a completely different list! But without much conclusive evidence towards proving the theory. Most of these hitters are at or above six feet tall.

It starts with a player who is 5-11 in Gary Sheffield, but how short really is that? It’s not like he’s 5-6. Pedroia and Akinori Iwamura are both short though, but they don’t necessarily stand out in a definitive way being past the top ten on this list.

What I’m beginning to realize is probably the conclusion in this experiment is that Jose Altuve is an anomaly. He’s a short hitter who hits the high balls really well, and for a lot of slug. He’s obviously a fabulous all around hitter who rakes on the first pitch of at bats (where he may get a lot of fastballs, generally thrown in the upper third).

Desahies theory may have been more anecdotal than factual, like he said. There’s simply not enough evidence to suggest that the best high ball hitters are the short players. I will say that the opposite may be true, which could be in part where his theory emerged from as well. Tall hitters may certainly struggle to hit the high balls, but that’s another project for another day.