I think there’s still a chance that Young can be a useful player. He was obviously awful last year. I agree there’s a big question mark around whether or not he can play third base every day. Coming into last year he had been a pretty good offensive player for nine straight years. Given that the other choices appear to be Kevin Frandsen or Freddy Galvis, I’m pretty glad to have him around. I think there’s a good chance he’ll hit very well. Also a chance that he’ll be so bad at third it won’t matter.

The Fish have a right fielder, guy named Stanton. What’s his isolated power number? He’d look good at the Bank, doncha think?

Here’s the way I do lineups in MLB The Show, which is about as realistic as modern video games get. (Sidenote – Revere turns out to be an exceptional leadoff hitter there!)

1. Highest OBP
2. Highest contact %
3. Highest OPS
4. Highest ISO Power
5. 2nd ISO Power
6. Highest BA RISP
7. The least bad of the 2 guys remaining
8. Michael Martinez

I fill 3 & 4 first, then back to 1 and down the line. I think about real life Phillies lineups the same way, and partly that’s why I go crazy about Rollins not leading off. His style is more 2 or 3 than 1.

What this post and the last have shown is that Revere is never going to hit 3, 4, or 5. The question is now if he’s going to be closer to leadoff or closer to Michael Martinez, and that will depend on whether he can get his walk rate up and/or hit around .320.

I’m not as big a fan of wOBA as a stat.. it tries to factor steals in, but it’s harder to grasp the result.

It’s important because it’s just an easy way to tell how much power a player has. Slugging percentage by itself can be misleading — a player with a .500 slugging percentage who hit .350 is a very different player than a player with a .500 slugging percentage who hit .220.

So if you have ten at-bats and, got three hits, all singles, and struck out seven times, you would have a batting average of .300 (three hits in ten at-bats) and a slugging percentage of .300. Slugging percentage is total bases over at-bats. If you have three hits and they are all singles, you have three total bases, one base for each single.

Your isolated power would be .000 (.300 slugging percentage minus .300 batting average).

If you have ten at-bats, get two hits, a single and a home run, and strike out eight times, you have a .200 batting average (two hits in ten at-bats). You have five total bases, four for the home run and one for the single. Five total bases in ten at-bats give you a slugging percentage of .500.

Your isolated power would be .300 — your .500 slugging minus .200 batting average.

In 2012 in the NL, the average hitter batted .254 with a .399 slugging percentage. That’s an isolated power of about .145.

Higher is better. Ryan Howard’s isolated power even last year was .204. For his career it’s .280.

By comparison, Juan Pierre’s isolated power last year was .064. For his career it’s .066.

The point is that Ben Revere has even less power than the guys you think of as having no power. And that’s going to make it really tough for him to be even an average offensive player.

Ok. So you don’t have to pretend.