One of my favorite players in baseball is a gritty corner outfielder who plays for my hometown team, and although fans derided him as a backup during the off-season, he's proven the doubters wrong so far by playing in 116 games in spite of his lack of power and ridiculed style of hitting. I decided to compare him to Brett Gardner.

What you see above are the players with the highest swing rate in the league (60.9%) and the lowest (31.1%). The contour lines indicate the area inside which each batter is 50% likely to swing at a pitch. This means that a pitch that might hit Jeff Francoeur's knee, and he's as likely to swing at it as a pitch right down the pipe to Gardner.

These graphs are all from the catcher's point of view, and the handedness of the batter is indicated by which side his name is on.

Finding players who have the biggest and smallest swing zones is the easy part. What about inside/outside? For interesting left-handed hitters, that's Andres Torres and Justin Morneau who differ most sharply.

As for righties, Michael Young and Shane Victorino are notable. Victorino, like Torres, is a switch-hitter, but I only included pitches when they were batting from the relevant side of the plate.

I was surprised to learn that Colby Rasmus extends his 50-50 swing zone a foot below the strike zone. Ronny Paulino hits from the opposite batter's box which makes his zone appear shifted, but it's actually very similar to that of Rasmus, but shifted a foot up.

And the only player to compare to Pablo Sandoval is himself.