SAN DIEGO -- Legendary Padres left-hander Randy Jones passed away at the age of 75, the team announced on Wednesday. He was, truly, one of a kind.
Here are five remarkable facts from a career that saw Jones enshrined in the Padres’ Hall of Fame in its inaugural 1999 class:
1. The Padres’ 1976 attendance
We’ll get to Jones’ on-field numbers in a moment. But if ever there were a figure that captures the phenomenon that was Randy Jones, it was the 1976 attendance figures at San Diego Stadium.
How much had Jones captured the city’s imagination? Well, that year, the Padres averaged 27,400 for his 21 home starts. They averaged 15,769 on their other home dates.
Randy Jones was the first true Padres superstar. Those numbers bear it out. And the city fell in love with his style as much as anything -- a 6-foot-tall sinkerballer, with a fastball in the low 80s, baffling hitter after hitter by getting them to bounce that sinker harmlessly into the ground.
2. A remarkable Cy Young season
By the All-Star break in 1976, Jones had a 16-3 record and was on the cover of Sports Illustrated with the caption “Threat to win 30.”
Thirty wins, of course, is a feat that will likely never be reached again -- nor was it achieved by Jones that year. He finished with 22 victories -- and he did so on a team that won just 73 games, making Jones the winning pitcher in about 30 percent of the Padres’ victories.
Jones led the Majors with a whopping 25 complete games. No National League pitcher has completed 25 games since. Naturally, Jones became the first Padre to win the National League Cy Young Award.
3. But how did he do it?
Among the most remarkable numbers on Jones’ 1976 stat line -- and there are plenty of them -- is the fact that he only struck out 93 hitters in 315 1/3 innings. Where would that 7.4% strikeout rate rank among qualified starters in 2025? Last. Double it? Second-to-last.
But it’s not like Jones’ method was merely a product of the times. He ranked 84th out of 88 qualifying starters in K% in that 1976 season. Nolan Ryan, he was not. And yet, for a couple seasons in the middle of his career, Jones was every bit as effective as Ryan.
Jones’ sinker was the stuff of legend. His slider was especially effective, too. He earned the endearing nickname “Junk Man.” Simply put: Jones won games because nobody ever squared him up -- he allowed 0.4 homers per nine innings in 1976 -- and he walked almost nobody.
Jones’ 1976 walk rate was a miniscule 3.9%, and at one point, he equaled Christy Mathewson’s NL record of 68 consecutive innings without allowing a walk -- a mark that would be broken by Greg Maddux in 2001.
4. His 1975 season might have been even better
All the acclaim for Jones came in 1976, because of the gaudy win total and the remarkable durability. But he was every bit as good -- if not better -- in 1975. Jones had a 2.24 ERA and won 20 games on a Padres team that won only 71. He threw complete games in 18 of his 36 starts.
Jones missed out on that year’s Cy Young Award to Mets’ ace Tom Seaver, but he had a serious claim to it. He led the league in ERA and ERA+ (which adjusts for park factors and league).
Perhaps the lack of strikeouts (only 103) and the lack of name recognition hurt him. But by 1976, that was no longer an issue. Jones pitched in relief and earned the save at the ‘75 All-Star Game. He would become the first Padre to start the Midsummer Classic in ‘76.
5. Jones worked fast
The game is almost mythical. Phillies vs. Padres -- Jim Kaat vs. Randy Jones -- on May 4, 1977.
If you blinked, you might have missed it. Jones pitched a complete game, and the game itself was over in just 89 minutes. It’s the shortest game of the past half-century. Kaat famously had concert tickets that night and was showered and in his seat for the 9 p.m. show -- after a 7:05 p.m. first pitch.
Mostly, this was just the way Jones operated. He didn’t get many swings and misses, so his outs were quick. And he never really deliberated about what he was going to throw. It was always pretty clear -- sinkers to righties and a sinker/slider to mix to lefties.
Jones started the second fastest game of the past half-century as well -- a 91-minute victory over the Phillies’ Steve Carlton in 1976. In fact, in the last 50 years, only 18 nine-inning MLB games have been played in under 100 minutes. Jones started six of them.