Dawgs By Nature
The Colorado Rockies have worked out a deal to hire Cleveland Browns chief strategy officer Paul DePodesta, according to ESPN. DePodesta, age 52, originally was with the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres, and New York Mets before being hired by the Browns in 2016 to run their analytics program.
In July of 2021, DePodesta signed a five-year contract with Cleveland in an effort to use numbers and analytics to find quality players to improve the roster.
It was widely known that DePodesta was the real-life person portrayed by Jonah Hill in the baseball movie “Moneyball” regarding how the Oakland Athletics used statistics and numbers in order to find productive players on the cheap.
DePodesta is now returning to baseball, where he has reportedly been hired to run the Rockies’ baseball operations department. This season, Colorado finished with a 43-119 (.265) record, 50 games out of first place in the National League West Division. The team allowed a league-high 1,021 runs scored. His job duties include turning around a stagnant franchise.
Cleveland is known to be the second most active analytics club behind the Philadelphia Eagles.
Many believe that DePodesta was a major player in the decision to trade for Houston Texans QB Deshaun Watson for that mammoth $230 million contract that was 100% guaranteed. At the time, Watson was a three-time Pro Bowler and had just thrown for 4,840 yards, 33 touchdowns with just seven interceptions, converted 221 first-down conversions, and had a completion percentage of 70.2% for a team that had only won four games.
Going back to baseball should be the easy part for DePodesta. Turning around a very horrid roster will not be. The Rockies’ current team obviously is bad, and their farm system is not the greatest.
With a 14-loss season by the Browns last year and already 2-6-0 this season, the accusations of who would go first began to circulate on social media, as well as the various sports radio shows and podcasts.
Maybe DePodesta saw the writing on the wall that somebody had to be blamed for all this bad football.
Head coach Kevin Stefanski is a two-time NFL Coach of the Year, and the 2025 draft class has been heralded as one of the best for a long while under GM Andrew Berry. Perhaps there is only a small chance that either one of these men would be let go after the season. If double-digit losses are once again the end result, somebody has to go. And Black Monday is usually the choice of most clubs.
Who would become the first to get fired with the Browns? Maybe DePodesta’s name was on top of the list. Did he leave to get ahead of this?
“That is certainly an interesting angle; it certainly wasn’t working,” stated Josh Aul of The Dawgs Podcast. “Maybe for DePodesta the writing was on the wall. At the end of the season if it continues the way it has been, somebody has to go. (Andrew) Berry had a...
