Baseball, football and “Moneyball,” Paul DePodesta has been a part of it all.
But now comes the Mount Everest of challenges: Fixing the Rockies, who are coming off three straight 100-loss seasons, including a franchise-worst 119-defeat fiasco in 2025.
The longtime Major League Baseball and NFL executive will be the next head of the team’s baseball operations, a team source told The Denver Post on Thursday. The Rockies are likely to announce the decision officially on Friday.
DePodesta has been part of the Rockies’ hiring process during their entire search and has interviewed with the team at its offices at 20th and Blake, the source told The Post. Additional front-office hires may be in the works, including the potential hiring of a general manager to serve under DePodesta.
Who is Paul DePodesta? What to know about Rockies’ new head of baseball operations.
The 53-year-old was the analytics whiz depicted by Jonah Hill in the 2011 movie “Moneyball.” He spent the last 10 seasons as the Cleveland Browns’ chief strategy officer. The Browns are 56-99-1 since hiring DePodesta in January 2016.
In Colorado, he’ll enter a losing situation similar to what he found in Cleveland. The Browns struggled through eight straight losing seasons when DePodesta joined the franchise. Since 2016, the Browns have had just two winning seasons. The Browns are coming off a 3-14 season that put them in last place in the AFC North. They’re currently 2-6 and facing another rebuild.
He’ll inherit another rebuild in Colorado, charged with hiring a manager, fixing one of the worst pitching rotations in baseball history, and figuring out what to do with the chronically injured Kris Bryant, the team’s highest-paid player, who has struggled to get out of the training room.
DePodesta will have to hit the ground running. Major League Baseball’s GM meetings begin Monday in Las Vegas. Plus, the Rockies are the lone team in MLB without a manager a week after the World Series concluded. They fired Bud Black in May and have not replaced the interim manager, Warren Schaeffer. It remains to be seen if Schaeffer will get an interview for the job.
The Rockies have not posted a winning season since making the playoffs as a wild-card team in 2018. Owner Dick Monfort and his son Walker, the executive vice president, said the club would look outside the organization for its top baseball executive. They stayed true to their word.
Two other finalists for the job, Arizona Diamondbacks assistant general manager Amiel Sawdaye and Cleveland Guardians assistant GM Matt Forman, held in-person interviews with the Monforts over the previous week, but neither man got the job.
DePodesta previously served as a front office assistant for the Cleveland Indians, Oakland Athletics and New York Mets. He was also general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers. That was his highest-ranking position in baseball.
He assumed the job in February 2004, and he was fired in October 2025 after the franchise went 164-160 over his two seasons. Former Rockies manager Jim Tracy served under DePodesta from 2004 to ’05.
DePodesta was born in Alexandria, Virginia, and was a childhood friend and youth soccer teammate of Thad Levine, the former general manager of the Minnesota Twins. DePodesta attended Harvard University, where he played baseball and football and graduated in 1995 with a degree in economics.
He was hired as an intern with Cleveland in 1996, where future Rockies GM Dan O’Dowd served as his mentor. DePodesta worked in player development, as an advance scout, and as a special assistant to the GM.
The Rockies parted ways with previous GM Bill Schmidt on Oct. 1. Schmidt had been the club’s GM since early in the 2021 season.
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