DePodesta on Move From Browns to Rockies: ‘A Sucker for a Challenge’

Not having solved his last challenge, newly hired Rockies president of baseball operations Paul DePodesta said he is a “sucker” for the task of rebuilding Major League Baseball’s worst team.

Meeting with Rockies beat writers in Las Vegas during MLB GM meetings there, DePodesta said he was drawn in by the task of reshaping a club that barely avoided a modern-era league record for losses in a season, has dropped at least 100 games each of the last three seasons, and hasn’t had a winning campaign since 2018.

“I’ve used this phrase before, but I’m a bit of a sucker for a challenge,” said DePodesta, who was hired last week by the club. “The reality is that’s usually the situation. That’s why these jobs become available. They’re rarely rolling [with wins] and then are looking for someone new to take over. I’ve lived through this a number of times. It’s not going as well as you would have liked and you look for something different.

“I’ve been a part of that a number of different times, and I actually really enjoyed it,” he said. 

DePodesta comes to the Rockies after a lengthy stint with the Browns as the team’s chief strategy officer, a period during which the team barely won a third of its games and now arguably is just as adrift on the field as when he arrived there in 2016. 

Before the Cleveland stint, he spent 20 years in baseball across five clubs, and while he said he wasn’t actively looking to return to baseball, he remains drawn to it.

“You know, your first love, you kind of always have that in the back of your mind,” he said. “There were situations in baseball that I’ve just always been really intrigued by. I thought, ‘Boy, if that were available, that would be pretty intriguing.’ And so this was one of those.”

Addressing the Past and the Future

DePodesta was part of a Browns leadership team that executed the Deshaun Watson trade, one that ranks as one of the worst in NFL history, and was described earlier this year by team owner Jimmy Haslam as “a big swing and miss.” 

“Most of the decisions, especially the big ones like that, are organizational decisions,” DePodesta said. “I’m not a believer in the ‘King Scout’ situation where there is one guy who makes every call. … The jobs are too complex, the decisions are too hard.”

With Colorado, part of DePodesta’s task will be to push the Monfort family who owns the club to modernize and elevate what has been described as one of the least-progressive organizations in the game, and one that had MLB’s No. 21 luxury-tax payroll in 2025 at $145.3 million. DePodesta is the first executive in more than a quarter-century to come from outside the Rockies organization to lead the team’s baseball operations. 

“I think we’re going to have quite a bit of autonomy to do what we feel is right,” DePodesta said. “[Ownership] has been very open to suggestions and to a lot of ideas. They’re not only open, but I think they’re excited about doing some things differently and having some outside perspective to bring the organization to try some different things.”