Paul DePodesta
Paul DePodesta (born December 16, 1972) is baseball front-office assistant for the San Diego Padres.
He has also served as general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers from February 16, 2004 to October 29, 2005. He was the ninth general manager in the club's history since moving to Los Angeles.
He is a native of Alexandria, Virginia and attended Harvard University, where he played baseball and football and graduated cum laude in 1995 with a degree in economics.
DePodesta worked for the Baltimore Stallions of the Canadian Football League and the Baltimore Bandits of the American Hockey League.
[edit] Baseball Executive Career
In 1996, he got his first baseball job with the Cleveland Indians, where he spent three seasons. He served as an advance scout for two years and his final month with the club he was appointed special assistant to General Manager John Hart.
In 1999, he joined the Oakland Athletics organization as an assistant to general manager Billy Beane.
DePodesta was a key figure in Michael Lewis's book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. It was in this book that sabermetric baseball analysis was thrust into the mainstream.
At the age of 31, he was named general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers on February 16, 2004 making him the fourth-youngest person to be named general manager in baseball history behind Jon Daniels (28) of the Texas Rangers, Theo Epstein (28) of the Boston Red Sox and Randy Smith (29) of the San Diego Padres.
DePodesta has been somewhat controversial in that he follows sabermetric principles, which are based largely on the analysis of Bill James. A schism has developed between traditional "tools" oriented baseball philosophy and the sabermetric philosophy that influences DePodesta and some other current general managers.
One of DePodesta's most notable moves was to trade catcher Paul Lo Duca, relief pitcher Guillermo Mota and outfielder Juan Encarnación to the Florida Marlins in exchange for pitcher Brad Penny, first baseman Hee Seop Choi and minor league pitcher Bill Murphy in what was reportedly an attempt to pick up pieces to acquire pitcher Randy Johnson from the Arizona Diamondbacks. DePodesta also acquired Brent Mayne to replace LoDuca as the everyday catcher. Although LoDuca faded down the stretch towards the end of the 2004 season, Brent Mayne fared much worse, hitting .188 and failing to record an extra base hit. Choi would do poorly as a hitter during his time in Los Angeles and Penny would spend significant amounts of time on the disabled list.
During the 2004 off-season, DePodesta reportedly offered a six-year, 66-million dollar contract to Adrián Beltré which he declined and chose instead to sign with the Seattle Mariners for a contract that had a yearly average value of about $2 million dollars more than the Dodgers' offer. He instead platooned Jose Valetin with Norihiro Nakamura, which turned to be a disaster. Nakamura was released for poor performance. Valentin performed poorly and then had a season-ending injury. Later in the 2005 season Mike Edwards was inserted at 3B, but still produced below average statistics.
DePodesta's prominent post-2004 season free-agent signings included J. D. Drew, Jeff Kent, and Derek Lowe.
Though fans and media roundly criticized these moves, Beltré and Mota were largely ineffective for their new teams, while Kent and Lowe performed well for the Dodgers. But DePodesta faced more criticism for signing the injury-prone Drew when he went down with a wrist injury after being hit by a pitch, while Jeff Kent and Milton Bradley clashed in the clubhouse, causing Dodger owner Frank McCourt to acknowledge the fact that the team should have been more aware of chemistry issues.
The 2005 season resulted in the team's worst record since 1992 and second worst since moving to Los Angeles in 1958.
On October 29, 2005, McCourt fired DePodesta, citing his desire to see the club win and that DePodesta had not met those expectations. Reports surfaced that the real reason McCourt had fired DePodesta was his inability to find satisfactory managerial candidates to replace Jim Tracy. He was later replaced by Ned Colletti.
On June 30th, 2006, DePodesta was hired as the special assistant for baseball operations for the San Diego Padres.
[edit] Personal
DePodesta has also served as a keynote speaker at numerous business conventions and has been recognized by several publications including Baseball Prospectus and Fortune Magazine, which named him as one of the Top 10 innovators under the age of 40.
He is married and has a son and a daughter.
