Paul DePodesta Leaving Browns to Take Over MLB’s Worst Team

After nearly breaking the modern-day Major League Baseball record for losses in a season, the Rockies are moving in a radical and unexpected direction with their baseball operations, according to industry sources and multiple reports. 

The club has hired Paul DePodesta, an early advocate in the adoption of advanced analytics, as its new president of baseball operations. DePodesta has an extensive prior background in baseball, having spent time in senior positions with the Dodgers, where he was GM, as well as Cleveland, the A’s, the Padres, and the Mets. Over nearly two decades with those clubs, he won division titles with each of them.

None of that, however, is recent, as he has spent the last 10 seasons with the NFL’s Browns as the team’s chief strategy officer.

There, DePodesta has not had much success. The team is 56-99-1 since he was hired, and though not directly responsible for personnel decisions, he was part of a senior leadership team that implemented the Deshaun Watson trade with the Texans that now ranks as one of the worst in NFL history. Even team owner Jimmy Haslam described the move earlier this year as “a big swing and miss.” 

The Browns still owe Watson $46 million each of the next two seasons, and he remains out with a torn Achilles tendon. The team surrendered three first-round picks for him, and he has played just 19 games in Cleveland since the deal.

The Rockies’ hire of DePodesta, however, shows a particular urgency for change from the Monfort family who owns the club.

The team has lost at least 100 games each of the three years, has just two winning seasons since 2011, and long has been regarded as one of the most insular organizations in baseball. Before the DePodesta hire, the club hadn’t hired an executive to lead its baseball operations from outside the organization since 1999. 

The Rockies have not yet made a formal announcement of DePodesta’s hire, but one is expected soon. The process to get to DePodesta was also difficult, as top candidates such as Diamondbacks assistant GM Amiel Sawdaye and Guardians assistant GM Matt Forman had issues with the GM job and the multiyear rebuild that will be necessary in Colorado.

DePodesta, meanwhile, was depicted in the 2011 film Moneyball by actor Jonah Hill, though under the character name of Peter Brand after DePodesta requested his name not be used. With the Rockies, he will succeed Bill Schmidt, who stepped down last month shortly after the conclusion of a 43–119 campaign in 2025.