A “ronin” in Japanese tradition is a samurai warrior who is homeless, wandering, unaffiliated, as a result of having lost his sponsoring feudal lord. Winning this election (after falling just short in the previous round) brings Joe Cronin out of the cold and into the Circle of Greats, as the 85th inductee into the COG. More on Joe and the voting after the jump.
Rbat is baseball-reference.com’s statistic estimating the number of runs a hitter created with his hitting compared to the number of runs an average hitter in his league and with his home park would have created with a similar number of plate appearances.
Most Rbat by an American League Shortstop, 1901-2000
1. Joe Cronin 247.2
2. Luke Appling 234.0
3. Robin Yount 232.9
4. Cal Ripken, Jr. 219.8
5. Lou Boudreau 193.0
6. Alex Rodriguez 190.9
A-Rod passed Cronin on the AL shorstop Rbat list in 2001, with a 58 Rbat year (his first admitted PED-aided season). Derek Jeter passed Cronin in 2005. Cronin remains third all-time in Rbat among AL shortstops today, behind those two guys, with no active player on the horizon likely to challenge him for years to come.
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Offensive WAR, or oWAR, is baseball-reference’s statistic that seeks to add up all of a hitter’s contributions on the offensive side of play and then makes an adjustment for the difficulty of the defensive position he played while he was making those contributions on offense. Defensive WAR, or dWAR, similarly adds up all of a player’s contributions on the defensive side of the ball and again makes a positional adjustment to reflect the difficulty of the position played.
Joe Cronin over his career totaled, according to baseball-reference, 63 oWAR and 14 dWAR. He is one of only ten players in major league history with career numbers at least that high in both categories. Those ten guys include one outfielder, Willie Mays, two catchers, Johnny Bench and Carlton Fisk, a third baseman, Mike Schmidt, a second baseman, Lou Whitaker, and five shorstops, George Davis and Honus Wagner, contemporary rivals Luke Appling and Joe Cronin, and Cal Ripken.
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Most Doubles in the American League, Over The Thirty-Season Period From 1929 through 1958:
1. Joe Cronin 502
2. Charlie Gehringer 497
3. Ted Williams 495
4. Mickey Vernon 486
5. Luke Appling 440
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Cronin was personally and actively involved in every major league season from 1926 through 1973, a 48-year run without a gap. A player in the majors from age 19 to 38, manager from age 26 to 40, general manager from age 41 to 52 and president of the American League from age 53 to 66.
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–After Cronin lost in a runoff to long-time holdover Roberto Alomar last week, it looked for a while as if Joe might again fall just short of induction, in favor of another long-time holdover, Eddie Murray. Murray was the leader until four of the final five ballots cast this round named Cronin but only one of them named Murray.
–The 28 votes Murray received was by far his largest total over the 66 rounds he has been eligible. Murray received 22 votes in his very first appearance, in Round 14, his birth year round of 1956, and he matched that 22 vote level recently, in Round 79. But that’s been his highest total till this week. He easily surpassed the 25% support threshold needed to gain an extra round of ballot eligibility going forward, bring his stash of guaranteed eligibility rounds to five. By the way, with 66 rounds of ballot eligibility in the books, Murray is creeping up on Craig Biggio’s Circle of Greats record of 69 eligible rounds.
–Roy Campanella also rode a wave of support this week to gain an extra round of eligibility, getting off “the bubble” where he has been sitting the last few rounds.
–With several fewer holdovers this week, and with only a single vote going to anyone from the 1904 birth year group, there were enough available votes to go around to not only give Cronin the win, Murray a record level of support and Campanella an extra round, but also to keep all the other holdovers above 10%. With Cronin inducted, the number of holdovers in the next round will decline further, from fifteen to fourteen.
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The full spreadsheet showing this round’s regular vote tally is here: COG 1904 Part 1 Vote Tally.
Three spreadsheets provide past vote totals for previous COG rounds, and related information about past COG voting. The newest such spreadsheet, which will collect votes from Round 83 on, is here: COG Vote Summary 3 . Spreadsheets showing results from previous COG rounds are here: COG Vote Summary/Rounds 1 through 37 and here: COG Vote Summary Rounds 38 through 82 . In all three of these archive spreadsheets, raw vote totals for each past round appear on Sheet 1; click on the Sheet 2 tab to see the percentage vote totals for each past round.
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A spreadsheet listing the full membership to date of the Circle of Greats, along with some stats for each member, is here: Circle of Greats Membership . Hitters are on Sheet 1, pitchers are on Sheet 2. You can also find that same link any time by clicking on “Circle of Greats” at the top of the High Heats Stats home page.
Another COG data spreadsheet showing each season a COG member played in the majors, along with the team he played for that season and his baseball-reference WAR (overall WAR for everyday players, pitching WAR for pitchers) for the season, is here:Circle of Greats Seasons
A splendid selection.
Craig Biggio – 763
Roberto Alomar – 725
*Eddie Murray – 703
John Smoltz – 658
Kenny Lofton – 608
Ryne Sandberg – 607
Edgar Martinez – 507
Lou Whitaker – 493
*Harmon Killebrew – 460
Whitey Ford – 382
Bobby Grich – 376
Sandy Koufax – 375
Tony Gwynn – 346
Willie McCovey – 336
*Kevin Brown – 321
Juan Marichal – 268
Tom Glavine – 262
*Minnie Minoso – 246
*Roy Campanella – 245
Alan Trammell – 239
*Dennis Eckersley – 234
Mike Mussina – 233
Curt Schilling – 224
Nolan Ryan – 220
*Dave Winfield – 217
Ron Santo – 217
Lou Boudreau – 216
Tim Raines – 213
Larry Walker – 197
Barry Larkin – 188
Frank Thomas – 181
*Rick Reuschel – 160
*Luis Tiant – 154
Paul Molitor – 152
Bob Gibson – 147
Gaylord Perry – 142
Jim Palmer – 133
Al Kaline – 132
Duke Snider – 130
Joe Gordon – 126
Ernie Banks – 119
Eddie Mathews – 115
1. The other holdovers: Richie Ashburn (99), Dwight Evans (57), Wes Ferrell (55), Graig Nettles (43), Red Ruffing (14).
2. 700 votes for Eddie Murray! He’s the third player to reach this milestone, behind Craig Biggio and Roberto Alomar.
3. Richie Ashburn, I am confident, will be joining the list in the 1904.2 round – since he only needs 1 vote to get to 100.
4. I anticipate a battle of Harmon Killebrew, Murray, and Roy Campanella in this next round.
5. Albert Pujols, David Wright, Harry Heilmann, Heinie Manush, Joe Medwick, Nick Markakis, Robinson Cano, Todd Helton, Tris Speaker, and Wade Boggs are the only players other than Joe Cronin to manage 40+ doubles in 4 straight seasons, I think; I did a search without benefit of the PI. So if someone has a PI subscription, double(no pun intended!)-check for me. It’s kind of an odd little group, but a cool one.
Good work, you only missed Jeff Kent. I did not need to use the PI, I had another method (although you can use the PI).
What was your method? I just looked at the all-time single season leaders in doubles on baseball-reference, which went down to 42 in a season. I copied them into a spreadsheet, sorted by name, and then I manually checked the guys who had multiples chronologically near to one another. I’m 100% certain there’s a better method than that – what did you do? Did you use a database of some sort?
I retrieved a database from Fangraphs. I got a list of every player-season, sorted by doubles, eliminated all rows with doubles under 40, sorted by year, sorted by name. Then by using the =if(…) command I found the players with 4+ consecutive years of 40 + doubles. It’s difficult to explain in words how I achieved the last step.
I see! I didn’t even THINK of using Fangraphs! Thanks for the idea!
@6
When you sort do it by player ID, not by name. Otherwise players with a shared name will show up as one person.
Also, if you want to splurge on the Complete Baseball Encyclopedia (20 bucks to download it), it has a PI-like function that will actually do “most consecutive season” searches for you. The CBE has a few, not a lot but a few, such tricks that the PI doesn’t do.
Just as it would have been with Alomar if Murray fails to gain admittance this round it’s possible that he will overtake Biggio before he finally does.
1903 Gehrig, Gehringer, Waner, Hubbell, Cochrane plus 3 other HOFer’s.
1902 Simmons + 1 HOFer
1901 (2)- only Heinie Manush
1900 Grove, Lyons, Hartnett, Goslin + 2 other HOFer’s
1899 Combs & Hoyt
1898(2) Terry, Sewell, Traynor, Cuyler
1897 Frisch
1896 Hornsby
1895(2) some guy named Ruth plus High Pockets Kelly
1894 Heilmann +1 HOFer
1893 Sisler +3HOFers
1892(2) Ray Schalk
1891 Vance + 3 HOFers
1890 2 HOFers
1889 (2) Coveleski
8 elections before we get to Frisch
I think Gehrig, Gehringer, Waner & Grove are absolute locks
Hubbell, Cochrane, Simmons, Lyons & Hartnett are at least about as good as anyone on the holdover list (IMO 3 are better than all but one) plus they have the added benefit of being the “new guy” at least for a round or 2.
I’d say it’s very unlikely that anyone on the holdover list gets in for the next 5 elections and maybe not then. Since it looks likely that Murray will pick up at least close to 20 votes this round he would only have to average around 8 votes per ballot for those 5 rounds to tie Biggio.
If my quick math is right in the next 20 elections I’d say that about 10 of the newcomers are pretty sure things and another 5 or 6 should be in the mix with our holdovers which should mean that at a minimum 4 or 5 guys currently on or added back to the holdover list will be getting into the COG. I may have overlooked someone since I only checked out the HOFers in each birth year.
whoa, when you put it like that, we’ve got a lot coming up. Might be tough for these holdovers. It gets a little easier once we get to 1888 and the few years before that, though, right?
~looks at 1888, 87, 86~
ohhhhhh…
On the bright side, there isn’t a single 60-WAR player from 1882-1885, so we’ve got that going for us…
Just so people know:
1888- Speaker, Faber, Wheat
1887- Johnson, Alexander, Collins + 1HOFer + Shoeless Joe
1886-(2)- Cobb, Baker+ 1 HOFer
As DD has mentioned between 85 and 82 the strongest candidates are probably Sherry Magee, Jack Quinn or Eddie (Black Sox) Cicotte.
In 1881- Ed Walsh- who should be interesting- kind of an early Koufax
1880- Mathewson, Crawford + Addie Joss for our fans of peak performance.
1879 Noodles Hahn- another bright, flaming star + 1 HOFer
1878- no one stands out
1877- same as 78
1876- Vic Willis might be the strongest candidate but also Three Finger Brown, Frank “Peerless Leader” Chance, Rube Waddell & Elmer Flick
1875 – Eddie Plank
1874- Wagner, Lajoie plus Jack Chesbro with a high peak
1873- Bobby Wallace + Mugsy McGraw
1872- Fred Clarke + Wee Willie Keeler (in retrospect, probably the BBWAA’s first “clunker” as the 11th man selected)
1871- Amos Rusie, Joe McGinnity
1870- the B-R “Born this year” feature doesn’t appear to go any further back than this but most of the big names around the cutoff like Cy Young & George Davis have been discussed elsewhere. Also be aware I just quickly scanned each year and could easily have missed a few.
I’m hoping the BBWAA surprises us with their next ballot & pick 3 or 4 but I don’t think we can count on it.