Who is Paul DePodesta? What to know about Rockies’ new head of baseball operations.

The Rockies have selected Paul DePodesta as the club’s new head of baseball operations.

Here’s everything you need to know about the 52-year-old tasked with leading Colorado out of its worst three-year stretch in club history. The team has yet to make an official announcement about the hire.

DePodesta, currently the Chief Strategy Officer for the Cleveland Browns, is most famous for one of his first jobs in baseball. He was an assistant general manager to Oakland GM Billy Beane, and DePodesta was featured heavily in Michael Lewis’ bestselling book “Moneyball,” which was then turned into a movie. Jonah Hill portrayed DePodesta in the movie as the character Peter Brand.

Paul DePodesta to be named Rockies’ head of baseball operations, source says

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What is Paul DePodesta’s background?

DePodesta was born in Alexandria, Virginia, and attended Harvard University, where he graduated with a degree in economics. He played baseball and football for the Crimson. As Lewis wrote in “Moneyball,” DePodesta “was just the sort of person who might have made an easy fortune in finance, but the market for baseball players, in Paul’s view, was far more interesting than anything Wall Street offered.” DePodesta’s first baseball job was with Cleveland, where he started in 1996 as an intern in player development. He spent three seasons with Cleveland, becoming an advance scout and later special assistant to the GM before moving to the Athletics in 1999.

DePodesta with the A’s

During DePodesta’s time with Oakland from 1999 to 2003, the A’s won three divisional titles and one wild card as the organization used sabermetrics to give the small-market club a major advantage on the field. Oakland applied that approach in both free agency and the draft, a realm that draft-and-build Colorado has struggled in over the past decade. Lewis wrote in “Moneyball” that “Billy (Beane) and Paul no longer think of the draft as a crapshoot. They are a pair of card counters at the blackjack tables; they think they’ve found a way to turn the odds inside the casino against the owner. They think they can take over the casino.” In some ways, they did: What Beane and DePodesta accomplished in Oakland changed the way nearly every MLB team evaluated players’ potential and worth.

DePodesta’s tenure in the NL West

DePodesta’s success with Oakland catapulted him to the general manager job with the Dodgers in 2004. At 31 years old, he was one of the youngest GMs in baseball history. In his first season with L.A., the club had its first playoff win since winning the 1988 World Series. He didn’t last long in L.A., however, as he was fired following the 2005 season after the team went 71-91 and finished fourth in the division. DePodesta then spent five seasons with the Padres from 2006-10, where he was a special assistant for baseball operations and the club’s executive vice president.

Mets, transition to football

From San Diego, DePodesta went to the New York Mets, where he was the club’s vice president of player development and amateur scouting from 2011-15. In that time, the Mets improved drastically, eventually culminating in a World Series appearance in 2015, where they lost to the Royals. DePodesta then jumped to football, becoming the Browns’ Chief Strategy Officer on Jan. 5, 2016. According to the team’s site, in that role, DePodesta “is tasked with implementing systems and processes to strengthen the Browns organization.”

Does DePodesta have any ties to the Rockies?

DePodesta worked with two guys with significant past ties to the Rockies. Dan O’Dowd, who was the Rockies’ GM from 1999 to 2014, was the assistant GM for Cleveland during DePodesta’s time there and was one of DePodesta’s baseball mentors. Plus, Jim Tracy, who managed the Rockies from 2009-12, was the Dodgers’ manager when DePodesta was GM there. DePodesta would be the second Colorado front office leader to have played baseball for Harvard, joining Jeff Bridich, who is four years younger.

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