He and Mark Fidrych were the poster children for Bill James' argument that the more batters you strike out, the better chance you have of having long-term success. I still would take one Tom Glavine with his 5.3 K/9 over 10 guys who can throw 100 mph but have no idea where it's going.
Would Fidrych have been more than a one-year wonder? We'll never know because of him trying to jump a chain link fence at spring training in 1977. But Jones actually had a statistically BETTER season in 1975, the year he finished second for the Cy Young. And he spent his entire career pitching for terrible teams in San Diego and New York. He did what you want aces to do: throw strikes, keep the ball in the park and get quick outs.
And like Fidrych, Jones got ridden HARD in 1976. Forty starts, 25 complete games. No surprise he broke down in 1977 but was still a good to very good pitcher for the next three seasons. Jones ended up with 17.8 WAR per BB-Ref, but he accumulated almost all of that between 1975 and 1979.
Yeah, he only struck out 3.4 batters per nine innings. But had he played for the Dodgers or Yankees instead of the Padres or Mets, he wouldn't have ended up 100-123. The Yankees did the same thing to Catfish Hunter in 1975 (328 IP and 30 complete games), effectively killing the rest of his career. But despite similar career ERAs, Hunter's in the Hall of Fame (and deservedly so) and Jones sold BBQ.
I'm not advocating for Jones to be anything but a good pitcher for his time. But despite pitch counts, better conditioning and better nutrition, pitchers are breaking down at an increasingly alarming pace. Multiple Tommy Johns are becoming commonplace and teams already know they have to stockpile arms because a certain percentage are going to blow out every year.
And yet everybody's searching for more miles per hour, more spin rate, more torque. The human body can't evolve quickly enough to throw objects this fast.
Randy Jones wouldn't even get drafted in 2025, let alone make a major league staff.
