Most main league baseball organizations suppose kind of the identical approach. They range on techniques and technique, in competency, in sources, and in tradition, however for probably the most half everybody agrees on find out how to win a baseball sport. This results in some groupthink and a number of same-y government hires.
The Giants have bucked the pattern, turning again the clock at hand the reins to an ex-player who’s lengthy on cultural cachet and quick on experience. He, in flip, made a delightfully unorthodox alternative for area supervisor. I sit up for seeing if these iconoclasts can maintain their very own.
To not be outdone, the Colorado Rockies have gone even additional off the board for his or her new head of baseball operations, as they’re reportedly nearing a deal to rent Paul DePodesta for the place. I’ll be as blunt as I may be: It’s one of many weirdest government hires in many years, from a corporation that’s no less than a full step behind its rivals to start out. With all the very best will on the planet, until DePodesta’s appointment heralds an entire change in organizational construction and philosophy, it’s virtually actually doomed to fail.
The Rockies went 43-119 this yr, and it’s not as a result of they’re cursed, or as a result of their dwelling metropolis has checked out, or as a result of their house owners don’t care. They ran the next payroll this season than three playoff groups. They lock up their homegrown success tales, similar to they’re, to contract extensions reasonably than delivery them off the second arbitration hits. Their file free agent signing, Kris Bryant, is on a richer deal than something the Astros, Blue Jays, Braves, or Cardinals have ever given out on the open market.
The Rockies’ issues, sadly, are worse than apathy. I wrote about them in Could, proper after they’d fired supervisor Bud Black, whereas they had been on a 28-win tempo. Learn it in case you’d like; I’ll simply quote the paragraph that identified their issues:
The Rockies, it seems, are famously insular. They like and belief Their Guys, and are loath to show over personnel or chase the newest improvements. In virtually another {industry}, that high quality could be benign at worst, and even laudable. However baseball is zero-sum. Should you’re not advancing, you’re falling behind. And since Black final led the Rockies to the playoffs, the industry-wide price of innovation has solely exploded.
I’ll say this for Rockies proprietor Dick Monfort: He’s lastly bringing in outdoors assist. This was not a given. DePodesta is barely the fifth baseball ops chief in franchise historical past, and the primary exterior rent since Dan O’Dowd in 1999. Wanting outdoors the household is an effective begin, however DePodesta was removed from the primary alternative.
The listing of candidates was spectacular. It included former Twins GM Thad Levine, former Astros GM James Click on, Royals assistant GM Scott Sharp, Guardians assistant GM Matt Forman, and Diamondbacks assistant GM Amiel Sawdaye.
Levine, Forman, and Sharp have constructed, or helped to construct, profitable groups on middling budgets. Click on gained a World Collection with one of the crucial dominant groups of the previous decade, at the same time as his boss was standing over his shoulder the entire time just like the Grim Reaper. Sawdaye gained three rings with the Pink Sox whereas working his approach up the ladder within the scouting division; from there, he adopted Mike Hazen to Arizona, the place they gained the NL pennant in 2023.
If I had been available in the market for a man to construct a decent ballclub from scratch, with out spending $300 million a yr on participant salaries, I’d really feel OK about hiring any of these guys.
None of them wound up with this poisoned chalice.
What of DePodesta, then? He’s extra well-known in baseball circles than most MLB GMs, because of his stand-in character’s presence at Billy Beane’s elbow all through the occasions depicted in Moneyball. At 31, he was given the keys to the Dodgers, whom he ran for 2 tumultuous seasons earlier than being fired by then-owner Frank McCourt. (Which isn’t inherently a strike towards him, McCourt’s status and baseball acumen being what they had been.)
DePodesta spent the subsequent decade working within the Padres and Mets organizations, and because the VP of participant growth and scouting for the latter, helped construct the monster pitching employees that took New York to the 2015 pennant.
I’ve little doubt that DePodesta may’ve gotten one other likelihood to run a serious league crew prior to now, however in January 2016, he made the surprising transfer to the Cleveland Browns of the NFL, the place he spent 10 seasons as chief technique officer.
The Browns had been then because the Rockies are actually; seen as irrelevant, innumerate, insular, and backward. DePodesta was given an extended leash to remake the membership as he noticed match. He beefed up the analytics division, stockpiled draft picks, and sought to focus on undervalued gamers, simply as he had in baseball.
Earlier than the 2019 season, my employers on the time, The Ringer, ran a themed bundle known as “Belief the Browns’ Course of Week,” based mostly on the premise that DePodesta’s crew was about to show a nook. This editorial determination was made far above my pay grade; I don’t know lots in regards to the NFL, however I do know higher than to recover from one’s skis in regards to the Browns.
As a part of this challenge, it was determined that I’d interview DePodesta for a function. My premise was that baseball was thus far forward of the opposite main sports activities when it comes to empirics and analytical integration, a sensible soccer (or basketball or hockey or soccer) crew may get a five-year soar on its rivals by hiring the precise baseball nerd with interdisciplinary abilities.
“Greater than something, we attempt to make data as accessible and actionable as attainable,” DePodesta advised me then. “There’s a number of attention-grabbing stuff. There’s a number of neat stuff, but when it’s not actionable, it simply isn’t related, and what we’re actually attempting to do is assist each our coaches and our personnel individuals of their decision-making course of.”
In hindsight, what DePodesta stated about team-building was cheap sufficient, and whereas he was cagey about what particular insights he delivered to the NFL, I used to be capable of tease out that the brand new market inefficiency was extensive receivers who’d had crappy school quarterbacks. However the Browns went 6-10 in 2019.
That’s not to say DePodesta’s tenure in Cleveland was a complete failure. He made the playoffs twice in 10 years, which is lots when you think about the franchise had solely made the playoffs as soon as in 17 seasons because it was reincarnated in 1999. DePodesta’s Browns introduced the franchise its first 11-win season and first win in a playoff sport since 1994. (And also you thought the Rockies had it unhealthy.)
Even with these highs, DePodesta didn’t cowl himself in glory within the 2020s. I stated earlier that I don’t know that a lot in regards to the NFL; my former colleague Rodger Sherman is aware of huge quantities in regards to the NFL, and when information of DePodesta’s hiring broke, he provided the next:
nonetheless outstanding that the Deshaun Watson commerce/signing backfired so fully that it is in all probability the worst NFL transaction of all time …
…
…
BEFORE you point out the handfuls of allegations of sexual assault that the Browns knew about and ignored— Rodger Sherman (@rodger.bsky.social) November 6, 2025 at 4:57 PM
It could’ve been troubling if DePodesta had profited from shopping for low on a proficient participant who had been revealed to be a(n alleged) serial sexual predator. Nevertheless it wouldn’t have set him aside from any variety of baseball executives. However DePodesta dug himself deeper right into a gap when he described the crew doing its due diligence on Watson across the time of the commerce.
“This has been probably the most detailed and dogged potential acquisition of a participant that I’ve ever witnessed,” DePodesta stated. “I imply, now in 25-plus years throughout two totally different sports activities, I’ve by no means been part of something prefer it. As we bought an increasing number of data by all of the steps that we took, all of the diligence that we that we undertook, all of the individuals we talked to and all the extra data we bought and particularly the views we bought from a few of the totally different individuals concerned or way more concerned with him, finally bought to the identical place … the place we had been actually snug with the individual.”
Professional sports activities groups make this ethical compromise greater than most of us would love, as a result of when the chance arises to accumulate an ideal participant on a budget, the temptation may be nice.
Besides, that’s not what DePodesta did. He shipped out six draft picks, three of which had been first-rounders, together with one the Texans used to pick out future Rookie of the 12 months Will Anderson Jr. Watson then bought a record-setting five-year, $230 million contract extension, and repaid the Browns by enjoying 19 video games over 4 seasons and posting the Forty second-best passer score out of fifty quarterbacks with no less than 15 begins since 2022. This yr, the Browns spent not one however two draft picks on quarterbacks, and Watson hasn’t performed a snap.
I’d query the judgment of anybody who offered his soul to the satan. All of the extra so when he didn’t even get something again.
In the meantime, the franchise QB DePodesta and I talked about, Baker Mayfield, is doing simply peachy with the Buccaneers. And the Browns completed thirtieth out of 32 groups in the latest NFLPA survey on working circumstances.
When DePodesta made the soar from baseball to soccer, there was loads of cause to imagine in him as an evaluator and decision-maker. He’s accomplished fairly a bit of injury to that status within the intervening decade.
Particularly as a result of baseball has modified a lot since he’s been gone. I presume that DePodesta’s been in contact together with his outdated buddies from his earlier profession, that he is aware of about fastball form and swing velocity usually phrases. However this can be a scouting and growth man whose final yr working in baseball was the primary yr of Statcast. The educational curve goes to be so steep it’d as effectively be vertical.
And if the Rockies had been in place to ease that transition in any significant approach, effectively, to be trustworthy, they’d’ve been capable of rent somebody like Sawdaye.
So what we now have here’s a crew that misplaced 119 video games this previous season, with worst-in-the-league scouting, analytics, and growth applications, a meddling proprietor, and the distinctive problem of enjoying in a metropolis the place curveballs don’t break. And the person the group has introduced in to make up the hole to its rivals is himself 10 years behind the occasions, with some critical questions on his judgment emanating from his time within the NFL.
I don’t like making predictions in absolute phrases; baseball is so capricious you’ll seem like a idiot in case you use phrases like “by no means.” It’s attainable that DePodesta may very well be the person who revolutionizes the Rockies, offers them their first prolonged run of competitiveness. It’s attainable, but it surely’d take a miracle.