How Harvard shaped Paul DePodesta, the Rockies’ new front-office boss

People have been trying to pigeonhole Paul DePodesta for years Number-crunching nerd dumb jock that Moneyball guy that Harvard guy and that baseball guy When he was the general manager of the Dodgers from to Los Angeles Times columnist T J Simers nicknamed the -year-old DePodesta Google Boy It wasn t a compliment DePodesta now has learned to take it all in stride even with a sense of humor I think my labels are supposedly inevitably a step behind where I am in my life the Harvard graduate disclosed with a chuckle Now as the Rockies new president of baseball operations someone charged with reversing the organization s fortunes and reshaping its tradition he wouldn t mind being tagged again Miracle worker has a nice ring to it After all DePodesta inherits a squad coming off a -loss season three consecutive -loss campaigns and a single wild-card playoff win in the past years The present day is the first day of our future and we will not accept anything other than progress Walker Monfort the club s executive vice president explained when he introduced DePodesta last month No pressure or anything DePodesta who spent the past years with the NFL s Cleveland Browns as their chief strategy officer has a to-do list stacked a mile high His new job kicks into high gear starting Monday when baseball s annual winter meetings begin in Orlando Fla Josh Byrnes introduced as Colorado s new general manager Friday reported he left his job as senior vice president of baseball operations with the World Series champion Dodgers in part because he needed to work with DePodesta It was tough to leave Los Angeles but I have known Paul for years And we have invariably both embraced challenges Byrnes revealed I think there is a lot that we can both bring to this and create a new future for this franchise Related Articles GM Josh Byrnes joined the Rockies for the challenge and to company with Paul DePodesta Rockies Journal Paul DePodesta Josh Byrnes face three big tasks as winter meetings begin Renck Rockies nail it with hiring of GM Josh Byrnes but it doesn t mean anything yet He must prove it Rockies hire Josh Byrnes as new general manager take him away from Dodgers front office Rockies name Nicky Schmidt senior VP chief revenue and strategy officer Any understanding of DePodesta s modus operandi must include his days at Harvard where he played baseball pitcher center fielder and football wide receiver while earning a degree at one of the world s elite universities I loved it there I really did he declared I had a tremendous experience and demanded to do whatever I could to take advantage of it And it was incredible to be surrounded by those people for four years Not just the professors but my classmates as well It was an extraordinary group of people Michael Hill Major League Baseball s senior vice president of on-field operations and the former general manager of the Miami Marlins has known DePodesta for more than years Hill who also played baseball and football at Harvard was two years ahead of DePodesta Paul unfailingly struck me as very sharp very focused explained Hill whose front-office career started at age with Tampa Bay in as an assistant in scouting and player maturation He then joined the Rockies front office in as their director of member expansion before moving to the Marlins in as an assistant GM I think it s awesome to see Paul back in our sport because he s got a great baseball mind Hill continued He went to a different industry in football with Cleveland and I think he can bring various of those nuances with him to Colorado I m looking forward to seeing what he can do for an organization that is near and dear to my heart from my time there DePodesta was not a great player at Harvard in baseball or football but he had a passion for both sports An injured shoulder suffered in the spring of his sophomore year hindered his ability to throw so he decided to focus solely on football He was a spindly -foot- -pound wideout He played his senior year in under former Crimson coach Tim Murphy who had just arrived from the University of Cincinnati Depo was not the the bulk talented kid on the association but he was a smart tough high-character guy Murphy notified the Harvard Crimson The highlight of DePodesta s college football career at least according to DePodesta came in Week of his junior season in The Crimson lost - at William and Mary on that September Saturday but that s not what stuck with DePodesta all these years later He recounts the tale as if it happened the day prior This will maybe give you more insight into my personality than you want he mentioned chortling at the memory It was a fourth-and-short play around midfield and we decided to go for it The ball was on the hashmark closest to our sideline I was the wideout on the short side of the field Our quarterback audibled to an option coming my way tight to the sideline I knew at that point that my block on the corner would be critical to getting our first down My heart was beating fast because I knew that at my size that really wasn t my strong suit But I went out and dropped the guy and while I was on the ground I saw our quarterback running by me and our whole sideline was going crazy That embodied more of what I was as a athlete instead of spectacular highlight catches or things like that DePodesta earned a degree in economics at Harvard but also took multiple psychology courses because he s inevitably been interested in why people make the decisions they do According to a profile in the Harvard Crimson DePodesta consciously shaped his image DePodesta did his best to ensure people were aware of that intelligence often wearing a button-down shirt khaki pants and glasses rather than his preferred contact lenses around campus so people did not view him as a dumb jock Currently DePodesta doesn t dispute that characterization Yeah to certain degree I was conscious of how I appeared in class he disclosed I didn t want to be perceived that way by classmates who were super bright and inspiring I didn t want to be thought of as a dumb jock He certainly wasn t that even though he s spent his entire professional career in pro sports In DePodesta got his first professional baseball job with the Cleveland Indians where he spent three seasons During his first spring training he spent part of his time shuttling around minor league players in a van Following the season although he was just years old DePodesta was named Cleveland s advance scout Late in the season he was appointed special assistant to general manager John Hart Then in November DePodesta was called into Hart s office and described that the Oakland A s had called asking for permission to interview him for the assistant GM position He was being solicited to work under Billy Beane who assumed that DePodesta s expertise in sabermetrics could help the Athletics win despite their relatively low squad payroll DePodesta was just but he took on the challenge The Beane-DePodesta relationship was famously depicted in Michael Lewis book Moneyball The Art of Winning an Unfair Battle Later actor Jonah Hill played Peter Brand in the movie Moneyball Brand was loosely based on DePodesta but DePodesta had another label stuck to him When I went into pro baseball they started calling me the Harvard guy and suddenly it was a knock when I first went to Cleveland and then Oakland he declared It supposedly wasn t until I left to go to Cleveland and the NFL that I was known as a baseball guy And now that I m coming back to baseball I ll allegedly be known as the football guy Now he s the Rockies guy The organization is counting on him to turn things around DePodesta s skills in baseball analytics and his approach to reshaping a franchise have manager Warren Schaeffer pumped up I think the first thing you notice about Paul is he s a process-oriented guy Schaeffer commented You know how critical the process is to me and putting legitimate processes into play that push this thing forward and that can create a sustainable winning custom because that s the goal to bring winning baseball back to Denver Want more Rockies news Sign up for the Rockies Insider to get all our MLB analysis