Is Denver a football town, or what?
Where else would the Major League Baseball team hire a pro football executive to figure out how to fix the franchise that almost set a record for losses in a season?
In fairness, Paul DePodesta, the Rockies’ new president of baseball operations, isn’t coming from the Cleveland Browns without plenty of MLB experience. But his ball has been shaped differently for some time now, and his time in the National Football League was a mixed bag.
Example No. One: Deshaun Watson is his Kris Bryant.
Much has been made of DePodesta’s history with the movie Moneyball, and there’s no denying his contributions to the run of success they helped produce for those Oakland A’s.
But that was a long time ago, and there’s a lot more to him than merely an innovative way to crunch numbers and evaluate undiscovered baseball talent. He’ll be the first to emphasize that point in his understated way.
“He is probably as smart an individual as I’ve ever come across in the game—intellectually, at just a different level than most, certainly at a different level than me,” said former Rockies general manager Dan O’Dowd, who gave DePodesta his start as an intern in Cleveland before the Moneyball days in Oakland.
“But he never acted like he was the smartest person in the room” O’Dowd told MLB.com’s Thomas Harding. “He could see things about players or about situations almost like a 50-yer-old with experience—and he was doing that in his early twenties.”
More significant are his years of success with the Mets, Padres, Dodgers and a second stint in Cleveland. All of those teams he was associate with experienced some level of postseason success.
A Harvard grad who played baseball and football for the Crimson, Paul DePodesta is, most of all, a pragmatic, serious-minded sports executive.
He will bring to the Rockies a detachment the franchise hasn’t seen before. Whether or not his style will play here depends largely on the freedom to do things his way (unencumbered by interference from Dick Monfort) and, of course, the luck every turnaround requires.
The names he brings to 20th and Blake won’t necessarily be ones that fans recognize, but they will be baseball people and analysts DePodesta feels can help him improve the competitiveness of the ball club.
The Winter General Managers Meetings this week in Las Vegas are only the beginning of a long slog for DePodesta and the Rockies.
In other words, don’t expect an overnight transformation.
There are many decisions to be made in the weeks and months ahead—some that will make headlines, and many that will have significant implications for future performance but won’t move the needle with fans until they make a noticeable difference.
I will be surprised if as much as two-thirds of the Rockies’ Opening Day roster next March appeared on the 2025 active major league roster at any point during the season just past.
I expect DePodesta to emphasize the following as a starting point toward improving the Rockies:
Find hitters who, first and foremost, make contact. It was obvious in the playoffs that teams that put the ball in play have an advantage, even if those live balls don’t always translate to clean hits.
Add some power. At Coors Field, the home team must take advantage of the altitude, though not at the expense of making contact. Bring back the Blake Street Bombers in some form.
Build a pitching staff around a strong bullpen. Whatever he can get out of starters will only make the overall staff better. With one or two exceptions, this fall’s playoff teams went as far as the arms in the bullpen took them.
DePodesta’s choice has drawn wildly mixed reviews in Denver—much to my surprise.
The Rockies did what fans have been screaming for by going outside the organization. And they found someone with a legitimate baseball resume.
I, for one, am eager to see who he brings in to help reshape the organization, and how the team on the field evolves.
Losing fewer than 100 games in 2026 must be viewed as the first step toward respectability and eventual success.
Even if Rockies fans would like more.
If DePodesta is in fact the answer, he’ll need time to remake the team.
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Denny Dressman’s 17th book, a collaboration with Kansas City artist Anthony High titled Black Baseball’s Heyday – Capturing An Era in Art and Words, will be published late this year. You can write to Denny at dennydressman@comcast.net.