Randy Jones 1950 - 2025

[Frayed Knot]

Speaking of guys whose career ended as a NYM.

[Gwreck]

One of 12 players to have won a Cy Young Award before joining the Mets....ok, maybe not everything has to be a trivia question.

RIP.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Wow, I just posted his name in that quiz yesterday. Now I have guilt!

[MFS62]

He was a reminder that you didn't have to have a blazing fastball to be a winner.

In his Cy Young award winning year, he threw 315 innings(!!) , and only had 93 strikeouts. I don't think many scouts would even look in his direction today.

He was a pitcher, not just a thrower.

RIP

Later

[Edgy MD]

Jones had an informal coaching gig, just putting an ad in the local papers for any kids who wanted instruction. One of his protégés was a 12-year-old Barry Zito, who would also won a Cy Young despite a below-average fastball.

I have seen no cause of death, but had been very public about being a cancer survivor, linking his throat cancer to his liberal use of chewing tobacco.

[whippoorwill]

Wasn’t he a dentist on the off season?

I wanted my dentist to be a baseball player

[Frayed Knot]

I had to look up the specific game and the details, but I remember watching this game at the time and being ... disappointed at the start.

Jones walked the first four Expos batters of the game [Jerry White, Mike Gates, Andre Dawson, Al Oliver] and was promptly pulled in favor of Ed Lynch

The fourth walk 'drove' in the first run obviously. Lynch then got two IF pop-ups to limit the damage until a two-out single plated two more.

Mets went on to lose 4-3

BB-Ref doesn't list individual pitches from that era but in my mind (and I'm pretty sure I'm right on this one) the four walks came on 16 pitches.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN198206220.shtml

Side notes: Jesse Orosco pitched two innings of relief for the Mets and Jeff Reardon pitched three for MTL

Mike Scott pitched the 9th for NYM

Jones made 41 appearances for the Mets and recorded zero outs on three different occasions (2 starts, 1 relief) facing 4 (3 H, 1 BB), 6 (4 H, 2 BB) and 4 (4 BB) hitters .

He also recorded just one out (6 batters faced) and 2 outs (9 batters) as a starter. All but one of those was in '82, his second and final year as a Met.

Known as a control pitcher before they got him [2.3 BB/9 as a Padre and only once in his career above 2.5], his rate more than doubled as a Met: 4.8 BB/9

iow, when he was bad, he was Really bad.