Howard Megdal speaks about his new book, "The Baseball Talmud"

Who was the greatest Jewish baseball player of all time? Hank Greenberg or Sandy Koufax? Howard Megdal will tell you based on not just his opinion, but on "modern sabermetrics."

What is that? According to the book by Gabriel Costa, Michael R. Huber and John T. Saccoman, "Understanding Sabermetrics: An Introduction to the Science of Baseball Statistics,"

"Born in the 1970s as a radical challenge to traditional baseball statistics, sabermetrics has developed into a new way of understanding many aspects of the game. Its practitioners have created new statistical tools and revised our old ways of thinking about established measures such as the batting average, tactics such as the sacrifice bunt, and even who among the greats was truly great...[using] ... concepts including normalization, peak versus career performance, linear weights and runs created, as well as popular calculations like OPS (On-Base plus Slugging), WHIP (Walks and Hits per Inning Pitched), PF (Park Factor) and others increasingly used by baseball fans."

While we haven't read Megdal's book, Tzvee's Talmudic blog can recommend any book about baseball and the Talmud sight unseen. Actually we wonder if this book has anything at all to do with the Talmud (from what we can tell on Amazon, it does not).

Be that as it may, if the book provides a "trenchant analysis" of its subject, using advanced techniques like sabermetrics, then we must approve of the use of Talmud in the title and of the book itself.

Howard Megdal "The Baseball Talmud"

Hear him speak: Sunday, Apr 5 2:00p at Borders Ramsey, Ramsey, NJ

A definitive position-by-position ranking of Jewish baseball players by New York Observer sports writer and radio commentator, Howard Megdal.