I commented yesterday about Zduriencik's unstoppable lust for 4 P/PA hitters.  Gutierrez, Hannahan, Lnagerhans, Griffey, Branyan, and now Hall.  I think a hitter is more likely to find himself again after a bad stretch if he does the one thing a hitter can always do to defend himself in the big leagues against any pitcher...work the count and put up a pro at bat.  You don't have a career 4 P/PA without the ability to put up a hard fought AB.
Every time Z grabs some guy off the scrap heap from now on, that is the first stat I'm looking at.  I really think Hall is going to surprise you.

So I've been thinking about Jose some more and I must say he is a bit confounding.  At fangraphs they breakdown a players performance versus different pitch types and Jose is all over the map, with no clear pitch type trends.
For instance, the statistics support the eyes regarding Adrian Beltre.  He just can't hit anything that bends.  I think this is why he hasn't developed.  He can't sit on his pitch because he is completely at the mercy of a pitcher with a average or better breaking ball.  Jose doesn't have this fatal flaw.  Last year the slider was his weakness, but this year it's the fastball.  Does this jibe with people's impression?  I think it was Jason Churchill who said he thought Jose struggled with good heat, but this is totally contrary to your view of him Doc.  I frankly think Jose is the most intriguing player on the M's right now.

...Lopez has a noticeable (though not super-severe) platoon split against power pitchers.  For msot of his career, he has indeed had trouble with good fastballs, though I do not think it's because he can't hit a good fastball.  I think he struggles against pitchers with good fastballs because he chases balls out of the zone too much if they are straight.  He is so uber-confident in his ability to hit the high fastball that he will routinely swing at the high fastball even when it is helmet high.  And the crazy part is...he usually makes contact. :)  Though 9 times out of ten, it's a lazy fly to left.

Check his B-Ref page, click more stats in the hitting section, scroll down to Pitch Summary, smile.
4.04 P/PA career for Hall.

I haven't seen enough Hall ABs to know why he is only an average walker (he does have 60 points of ISO-Pat...it's not like he's Jose Lopez out there...he just strike out an awful lot so the EYE is horrid.  Why is Hall striking out so much?  Maybe he has a good eye but when he gets his pitch, his swing is too long/slow?

Beltre strikes out a lot and his P/PA is a career 3.50 or so.  So no...that's not a given.  Strikeouts do take more pitches to record than contact outs on average so it's conceivable that Hall's P/PA is high because he's working the count TOO much...getting 1-2 a lot instead of being aggressive on early pitch strikes.

Lopez' HRs are definetly extremely to the pull-side.
I do think he'll stay in that 15-20 HRs range in his prime if he can maintain a solid FB%. '09 is probably an up year power-wise, but you never know considering Lopez' great CT% and rising FB%.

Beltre is a contact hitter.  There's a lot of differences between him and Bill Hall in the Batter's Box.  Adrian Beltre makes contact more often (76%, 80%, 76%  compared to 74%, 74%, 69% over the last 3 years), when he makes contact, Adrian is more likely to put the ball in play when he makes contact (31%, 33%, 35% to 26%, 24%, 24%), and swings at pitches outside the strikezone more often (37%, 34%, 38% to 25%, 27%, 25%), and when they do swing out of the zone, Adrian makes a lot more contact again (63%, 68%, 58% to 54%, 56%, 53%).  Here's the one that just caught me by surprise, Bill Hall swings at the first pitch more often (36%, 33%, 36% to 28%, 28%, 29%).  But still, I think the higher p/PA for Bill Hall is built on greater patience and less contact skill.  Franklin Gutierrez has a similar p/PA to Hall, but contact rates more similar to Beltre, though he almost never swings at a first pitch (11%, 12%, 10%) compared to the other two.

Hall seems to be a player who has lots of patience and can work the count, but then he doesn't have enough skill for hitting the ball when he decides to swing.  So he takes some walks but pitchers know they can "give in" to Hall when they get behind in the count and there's a decent chance he'll miss the ball anyway.

Don't look now, but Jose now has a positive UZR for the 5th time in 6 seasons.  I wonder what his statistics would be like if he could actually field :)