The Colorado Rockies have hired Paul DePodesta from the Cleveland Browns, the team announced on Friday. DePodesta, known for “Moneyball” fame, was hired as the Browns’ chief strategy officer in 2016.
Now, DePodesta will return to baseball as the Rockies’ head of baseball operations.
“Today is an exciting day for the Rockies organization as we welcome Paul as our new president of baseball operations,” said owner Dick Monfort in a statement. “Paul was the very first person we interviewed, and throughout our conversations with him, Walker and I were both intrigued by his understanding of the game, his positive attitude, his process-based mindset and his influence on the game. This is a special guy with great vision and a great plan. He is a winner and he is going to win in Colorado.”
The move signals a clear philosophical shift and reboot for the Rockies, who are coming off the worst season in franchise history. Colorado finished 43-119 in 2025 — not quite the Chicago White Sox’s historically bad 2024 season but bad enough to raise concerns about the team’s future.
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The Rockies have already made some key changes: The team fired manager Bud Black in May after a historically bad start to the season, and it has yet to settle on a new manager. General manager Bill Schmidt resigned after the season concluded.
However, Colorado’s issues were not confined to 2025: The Rockies have lost at least 94 games in four straight seasons, and they’ve suffered at least 103 defeats each of the past three years. They haven’t had a winning season since 2018.
As a result, the Rockies are turning to DePodesta, who came to prominence during the then-Oakland Athletics’ “Moneyball” era and was a significant character in Michael Lewis’ 2003 book on the subject. (DePodesta partially inspired the character played by Jonah Hill in the film adaptation.)
After time on and off in MLB front offices, DePodesta was hired by Cleveland in 2016 to revitalize a team coming off a 1-15 season and a 14-year playoff drought. Although it took three more years and a brutal 0-16 season, DePodesta and the Browns eventually made it to the playoffs in 2020.
However, DePodesta’s tenure in Cleveland has come with some eyebrow-raising decisions. He was the driving force behind the Browns’ trade for embattled and perennially injured quarterback Deshaun Watson, which Browns owner Jimmy Haslam has since admitted was “a swing and a miss.”
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DePodesta will have plenty to work on this offseason in Colorado. The 2025 Rockies allowed a whopping 1,021 runs, with a run differential of -424 — twice as much as the second-worst team, the Washington Nationals. In addition, the Rockies had a terrible pitching staff, which posted an MLB-worst 5.97 ERA.
It’s unclear if DePodesta will be expected to “Moneyball” the situation in Colorado, but it is clear that some sweeping changes need to be made.
