Randy Jones, the soft-tossing craftsman who made an artform out of late movement and the ground ball, died on November 18, 2025. He was 75. A San Diego Padres icon and the 1976 National League Cy Young Award winner, Jones leaves behind a legacy that stretches well beyond the win-loss column and into the soul of a franchise that adopted him as one of its own.

To the baseball world he was the “Junkman,” a moniker that landed with a grin but described something more precise: a left-hander whose command and sinker transformed the batter’s box into a guessing game. To San Diego, he was the face on the wall at the ballpark, the number 35 stitched into memory, and a community force who turned his post-baseball years into a mission of hospitality and help.

The Junkman Who Rewrote the Strike Zone

Jones did not overwhelm hitters; he undercut them. His distinctively heavy sinking fastball bored late and low, turning big swings into cue shots and rally threats into routine grounders. In an era that often romanticized raw velocity, Jones offered a counter-argument built on touch, angle, and nerve.

Pitchers who live at the knees need conviction. Jones had it in bulk. He invited contact and trusted the physics of his pitch and the leather behind him. The result was a style that looked simple from the stands and felt suffocating from 60 feet, 6 inches.

“Randy Jones proved command can be as electric as velocity.”

A Peak for the Ages in 1975–76

The mid-70s were Jones’ masterpiece. He finished runner-up for the NL Cy Young Award in 1975, then seized it in 1976—a back-to-back surge that defined a franchise coming of age. The All-Star stage only amplified his moment: he secured the save for the National League in 1975 and returned as the starting pitcher—and winner—the following summer.

Numbers tell a story, but in Jones’ case they also demand a second look. He retired with a 100–123 record, yet a 3.42 ERA and the sport’s top pitching honor argue powerfully for context. Team quality, run support, and the era’s evolving understanding of value helped script the paradox that makes Jones unique: he is the only starting pitcher to win a Cy Young Award and finish his career with a losing record. That rarity doesn’t diminish his peak; it underlines it.

• 1976 NL Cy Young Award winner; 1975 runner-up
• Career ERA: 3.42
• 1975 All-Star Game: earned the save for the NL
• 1976 All-Star Game: winning starting pitcher

“If you loved pitching as a craft, you loved Randy Jones.”

The Injury That Changed Everything

The story of his career peak is inseparable from the injury that followed. In 1976—a year that cemented his place in Padres lore—Jones suffered a nerve injury to his pitching arm. Surgery followed, and with it, a slow fade that would limit his later effectiveness.

He would go on to pitch for the New York Mets, but the version of Jones that baffled hitters with that bowling-ball sinker could never be fully rewound. It’s a reminder that a baseball life can pivot in an instant, and that greatness often leaves its brightest mark in a concentrated span.

A San Diego Original, On and Off the Field

For all the numbers attached to his name, Jones’ connection to San Diego is written in people and places. He invested in the community with restaurants, car washes, and a familiar presence that made him more than a retired athlete—he became a local institution.

Diagnosed with throat cancer in 2016, a consequence he attributed to years of chewing tobacco, Jones underwent treatment and was declared cancer-free by 2017. The fight added to his stature as a public figure who met adversity with candor and grit. Through it all, the Padres stood with him, and the city did too.

His charitable work was not window dressing. The Randy Jones Run/Walk became a staple in the region, benefiting individuals with developmental disabilities through the Home of Guiding Hands organization. In that space—well beyond the diamond—Jones turned his platform into tangible care.

When the Padres retired his number 35, it formalized what San Diego had long felt: this was a player who embodied a franchise. At his passing, the Padres and voices across the baseball media landscape recognized him exactly that way—an icon, a champion, a symbol of a time when a left-hander with a sinking fastball could put an entire league on tilt.

“He made ground balls feel inevitable—and hope feel real—for Padres fans.”

Legacy Beyond the Box Score

Baseball is increasingly fluent in the language of movement profiles and batted-ball data. In that context, Randy Jones feels ahead of his time. He was a ground-ball machine before the term was fashionable, an early proof point that run prevention can be engineered with trajectory as much as with triple-digit speed.

His career arc—blazing peak, untimely injury, stubborn effectiveness—invites a different measure of greatness. By the old markers, a losing record might overshadow the accomplishments. By more thoughtful ones, Jones is the kind of player who forces us to weigh circumstance and context: what he did, when he did it, and for whom he did it.

For the Padres, he is a first chapter and a benchmark. The franchise has produced stars and pennant runs since, but Jones’ 1975–76 window remains a touchstone—a reminder that dominance can be nuanced and that mastery, once achieved, needs no apology.

Farewell to a Craftsman

Randy Jones’ passing lands as both a loss and a call to remember. He stood as a testament to baseball’s quieter virtues: location, late life, persistence. He wore the Padres’ brown and gold like a second skin, and he wore San Diego’s trust with equal care in his years after the game.

He was, in every meaningful way, the Padres’ own—a Cy Young winner, a survivor, a neighbor, a benefactor, and a storyteller whose best pitch still sinks in the minds of those who watched him work. San Diego will see his number and think of summer grounders, of All-Star moments, of resilience. Baseball, too, will keep his example close: that brilliance can be carved at the edges of the plate, and that legacy is measured as much in lives touched as in lines on a stat sheet.

Randy Jones, 75. The Junkman. Forever a Padre.