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Speaker 1 (00:00):
And we are really happy to be joined by Paul
de Podesta, who is a director or president baseball operations.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Here for the Colorado.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Rocki’s good to meet you in person. Thanks so much
for spending some time with us. And we’ve all we’re
all gonna have questions for you, But why don’t we
start with Gina?
Speaker 3 (00:16):
So I’m curious, Paul, you’ve talked a lot about baseball
at altitude. In fact, when we were walking into Course Field,
I loved how literally the signs this year, a lot
of the signage is baseball at altitude. How are you
working with the players to find a way to make
it more of an advantage because some people always look
at it as a disadvantage.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
Here at Corsefield, right, I mean, it is a very
different brand of baseball. And what I think we have
to do is we need to figure out what winning
looks like here for us, not as a visitor where
you come in for three days, but you know, for
the home team where you’re here eighty one days.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I’ve been here as a visitor.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
It’s not pleasant at times, and I need to you know,
we need to recreate that here from the home side
and do it each and every day. So part of
it is about how we play the game. I mean,
there’s just more acreage on this field than anywhere else
in baseball, so we have to defend better than other teams,
especially in the outfield, and then we need to take
advantage of that offensively. We need to put the ball
and play more. We need to run the bases really aggressively.
(01:12):
If anyone’s watched our games in the first week, they’ve
probably seen that.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
You know, we’ve been very aggressive on the basis. So
there are a lot of other.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
Things too that we’re talking about and we’re starting to
implement that I probably won’t be as forth right about,
but no, I think we’re going to have what you
would consider a Rockies way.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
You seem like a glass half full kind of guy.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
You walked into this with a little bit of optimism
when a lot of people might have walked into it
being like, who what am I getting myself into.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
I think we all have to, you know, I think
not just not just me or even some of the
other people we brought in the front office, but also
a lot of our major league coaches and then even
our players. This was a challenge. They all sort of
ran toward, you know, as opposed to trying to run
away from you know, we signed three free agents starting pitchers,
and I think that surprised a lot of people and said, geez,
you have you know, the Rockies haven’t signed a starting
(01:58):
pitcher on a long time.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
How did you can convinced them to come here?
Speaker 4 (02:01):
And we said, we didn’t try to convince anybody, Like
we basically tried to make itself selecting, like who wants
this challenge? And those are the guys who you know,
of the guys we wanted, those are the guys who
stepped up and wanted that challenge. And it was a
pretty short list, but we were thrilled to have them.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
So you’ve worked in both football and baseball, and I
wanted to ask you, what is something that you learned
in football that you have brought to baseball that you
think maybe people who have only worked in baseball.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Maybe might not have thought of.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
Sure, I mean, I think football really is the probably
the ultimate team game. You know, if one guy doesn’t
do his job, if the left guard misses his block,
it really doesn’t matter what everybody else does right the
play breaks down right, So everyone has to be truly
accountable to everybody else.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
A lot of other.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
Sports feel even though their team sports can feel more individualized.
Right baseball you have the pitcher hit or conference, the
hitters up there by himself, you know, et cetera. But
I do think there’s room for that, that sort of
team a team idea, you know, of team offense, especially
in baseball, or team defense. I just talked about some
of the things already, like you know, the well, the
(03:15):
way we have to play the outfield, the way we have.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
To run the bases.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Those are things that are really pretty selfless and that
they really are about the team, and they should get
the team ultimately excited, you know. And and I think
we saw that in the first week in our games,
you know, especially in Toronto. You guys taking extra base,
Guys stealing a base in a big spot and then
getting a two out base hit like those are Yeah,
that’s team baseball. It’s not just one guy going up
(03:38):
there and hitting a homer, you know, and and trotting
around the bases. It’s really about everybody doing what they
can to help the team.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
Well, we saw it last year. I mean you mentioned Toronto.
In Toronto in the World Series last year, the Blue
Jay’s team, they called it, I think the fast break
offense when they would go out and they would get
two three hits in an inning. Obviously, if you can
string a couple of hits together, you’re gonna score a run,
maybe even more. Is that similar to what you guys
are trying to instill here with that team style approach, because,
(04:05):
like you mentioned, baseball is a very individual sport.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
Yeah, we’ve tried to create a lot of sort of
team based metrics, you know, for our guys to focus
on what we need to do as a team every
day to win a game and to win a game
here at course, you know again, baseball is so individualized.
Everyone gets all their individualized statistics. You know, what’s your
batting average, what you’re on base, how many home runs
have you hit, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
We we’re looking at and say.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
Okay, well what do we need to do each game
as a team to go out and win? And we’ve
made all of our players aware that again I said
this earlier, what does winning look like at coors Field?
We’ve tried to break that down for him and make
it very clear so they know what they have to
do and then they then know what they have to
do individually to contribute to that team. You know, you
mentioned the Blue Jays, you know both think the Blue
(04:49):
Jays and the Dodgers last year in the World Series.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I think those were I think great.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Examples of team baseball, like the way those guys played offense,
the way they passed the baton to the next hit,
or if they don’t get the pitch they want, or
just doing whatever it is they have to do with
the plate in that moment, you know, for the team
to be successful. And then certainly something we’re trying to
you know, adopt. Got time for one more question. We’re
talking with Paul D.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Potesta, president of baseball operations for the Colorado Rockies. So
you come in here bringing this new vision, but you
also got to you got a new manager, You’ve got
lots of new players.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
It really is probably as close to a.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Clean slate as I’ve seen in any sport in quite
some time.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
So how do you think about that?
Speaker 4 (05:31):
Yeah, I think what we wanted to do when we
first came in was not to clean everything out.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
We really want to.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
See what our capabilities were as an organization and then
just build on top of them, you know, figure out
what was missing where we could add and that’s really
what we’ve done. So you mentioned Yoshef as our manager.
You know, he was the interim manager at the end
of last year. We made him the permanent one. We
did keep some of our coaches from last year, but
then we brought it, brought in some coaches from different
organizations just to bring in new perspectives. You know, we
(05:57):
brought in coaches from Detroit and my Miami and Chicago, Toronto,
San Francisco and the guys who’ve been in all sorts
of different places the Dodgers, because we want, you know,
we want a little bit of taste from each of
those different organizations. Hey, what did they do well that
we can that we can do here or that we
can make our own here in Colorado.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
And we did that also with some of the players
that we brought in.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
So that was the idea was how can we just
build on top of what we thought was already a
really strong foundation here.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Keidan, If you want one last quick question, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
TJ.
Speaker 5 (06:28):
Rumfield has played SUPERB baseball this year. He was a
guy off season acquisition in January. Any other prospects that
you see right now that are playing in maybe Double
A or Triple A that you’re keeping an eye on
who could make an appearance this season.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
Yeah, I think we had some guys that had really
good camps. I mean, Charlie Connon was the first round
pick a couple of years ago. He had a tremendous
camp and he’s off to a really good start so far.
In Triple A. A couple of pitchers are doing well.
Tanner Gordon, who pitched up here last year and did
a nice job. He had a great spring and is
pitching well in Triple A, Sean Sullivan off to a
really good start, and Triple A left handed pitcher.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
There are a bunch more so I don’t want to
leave guys out.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
But but no, we were really encouraged by what we
saw down in Arizona.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Paul de Podesta, president of Baseball Operations here at the
Colorado Rockies, thanks for joining us. Great to meet you
and person have a great home opener, and go Rockies.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Thanks so much. Yeah, Go Rockies.