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