People have been trying to pigeonhole Paul DePodesta for 30 years. Number-crunching nerd, dumb jock, “that Moneyball guy, “that Harvard guy” and “that baseball guy.”
When he was the general manager of the Dodgers from 2004 to 2005, Los Angeles Times columnist T.J. Simers nicknamed the 31-year-old DePodesta “Google Boy.” It wasn’t a compliment.
DePodesta, now 52, has learned to take it all in stride, even with a sense of humor.
“I think my labels are probably always a step behind where I am in my life,” the 1995 Harvard graduate said with a chuckle.
Now, as the Rockies’ new president of baseball operations, someone charged with reversing the team’s fortunes and reshaping its culture, he wouldn’t mind being tagged again. “Miracle worker” has a nice ring to it.
After all, DePodesta inherits a team coming off a 119-loss season, three consecutive 100-loss campaigns, and a single (wild-card) playoff win in the past 18 years.
“Today is the first day of our future, and we will not accept anything other than progress,” Walker Monfort, the club’s executive vice president, said when he introduced DePodesta last month.
No pressure or anything.
DePodesta, who spent the past 10 years with the NFL’s Cleveland Browns as their chief strategy officer, has a to-do list stacked a mile high. His new job kicks into high gear starting Monday when baseball’s annual winter meetings begin in Orlando, Fla.
Josh Byrnes, introduced as Colorado’s new general manager Friday, said he left his job as senior vice president of baseball operations with the World Series champion Dodgers in part because he wanted to work with DePodesta.
“It was tough to leave (Los Angeles), but I have known Paul for 30 years. And we have always both embraced challenges,” Byrnes said. “I think there is a lot that we can both bring to this … and create a new future for this franchise.”
Any understanding of DePodesta’s modus operandi must include his days at Harvard, where he played baseball (pitcher, center fielder) and football (wide receiver) while earning a degree at one of the world’s elite universities.
“I loved it there; I really did,” he said. “I had a tremendous experience and wanted to do whatever I could to take advantage of it. And it was incredible to be surrounded by those people for four years. Not just the professors but my classmates as well. It was an extraordinary group of people.”
Michael Hill, Major League Baseball’s senior vice president of on-field operations and the former general manager of the Miami Marlins, has known DePodesta for more than 30 years. Hill, who also played baseball and football at Harvard, was two years ahead of DePodesta.
“Paul always struck me as very sharp, very focused,” said Hill, whose front-office career started at age 24 with Tampa Bay in 1995 as an assistant in scouting and player development. He then joined the Rockies’ front office in 2000 as their director of player development before moving to the Marlins in ’02 as an assistant GM.
“I think it’s awesome to see Paul back in our sport because he’s got a great baseball mind,” Hill continued. “He went to a different industry, in football, with Cleveland, and I think he can bring some of those nuances with him to Colorado.
“I’m looking forward to seeing what he can do for an organization that is near and dear to my heart from my time there.”
DePodesta was not a great player at Harvard in baseball or football, but he had a passion for both sports. An injured shoulder suffered in the spring of his sophomore year hindered his ability to throw, so he decided to focus solely on football. He was a spindly, 5-foot-11, 160-pound wideout.
He played his senior year in 1994 under former Crimson coach Tim Murphy, who had just arrived from the University of Cincinnati.
” ‘Depo’ was not the most talented kid on the team, but he was a smart, tough, high-character guy,” Murphy told the Harvard Crimson.
The highlight of DePodesta’s college football career, at least according to DePodesta, came in Week 2 of his junior season in 1993. The Crimson lost, 45-17, at William and Mary on that September Saturday, but that’s not what stuck with DePodesta all these years later.
He recounts the tale as if it happened yesterday.
“This will probably give you more insight into my personality than you want,” he said, laughing at the memory. “It was a fourth-and-short play around midfield, and we decided to go for it. The ball was on the hashmark closest to our sideline. I was the wideout on the short side of the field.
“Our quarterback audibled to an option, coming my way, tight to the sideline. I knew at that point that my block on the corner would be critical to getting our first down. My heart was beating fast because I knew that at my size, that really wasn’t my strong suit.
“But I went out and dropped the guy, and while I was on the ground, I saw our quarterback running by me, and our whole sideline was going crazy. That embodied more of what I was as a player, instead of spectacular highlight catches or things like that.”
DePodesta earned a degree in economics at Harvard but also took many psychology courses because he’s always been interested in why people make the decisions they do.
According to a 2012 profile in the Harvard Crimson, DePodesta consciously shaped his image:
“DePodesta did his best to ensure people were aware of that intelligence, often wearing a button-down shirt, khaki pants, and glasses (rather than his preferred contact lenses) around campus so people did not view him as ‘a dumb jock.’ ”
Today, DePodesta doesn’t dispute that characterization.
“Yeah, to some degree, I was conscious of how I appeared in class,” he said. “I didn’t want to be perceived that way by classmates who were super bright and inspiring. I didn’t want to be thought of as a dumb jock.”
He certainly wasn’t that, even though he’s spent his entire professional career in pro sports.
In 1996, DePodesta got his first professional baseball job, with the Cleveland Indians, where he spent three seasons. During his first spring training, he spent part of his time shuttling around minor league players in a van.
Following the ’96 season, although he was just 24 years old, DePodesta was named Cleveland’s advance scout. Late in the 1998 season, he was appointed special assistant to general manager John Hart.
Then in November 1998, DePodesta was called into Hart’s office and told that the Oakland A’s had called, asking for permission to interview him for the assistant GM position. He was being asked to work under Billy Beane, who believed that DePodesta’s expertise in sabermetrics could help the Athletics win, despite their relatively low team payroll.
DePodesta was just 25, but he took on the challenge. The Beane-DePodesta relationship was famously depicted in Michael Lewis’ book, “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.” Later actor Jonah Hill played Peter Brand in the movie “Moneyball.” Brand was loosely based on DePodesta, but DePodesta had another label stuck to him.
“When I went into pro baseball, they started calling me ‘the Harvard guy,’ and suddenly, it was a knock when I first went to Cleveland and then Oakland,” he said. “It probably wasn’t until I left to go to Cleveland and the NFL that I was known as a ‘baseball guy.’ And now that I’m coming back to baseball, I’ll probably be known as the ‘football guy.’ ”
Now he’s the Rockies’ guy. The organization is counting on him to turn things around. DePodesta’s skills in baseball analytics and his approach to reshaping a franchise have manager Warren Schaeffer pumped up.
“I think the first thing you notice about Paul is he’s a process-oriented guy,” Schaeffer said. “You know how important the process is to me, and putting legitimate processes into play that push this thing forward and that can create a sustainable winning culture — because that’s the goal, to bring winning baseball back to Denver.”
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