Renck: In hiring Paul DePodesta decades too late, Rockies continue making wrong moves even with right intentions

The email represented the Rockies in one news release They brought in a fresh set of eyes from the outside a person who has been with the Browns for the last decade Not St Louis Cleveland Wait what They tried to do the right thing And they still got it wrong Their search for a president of baseball operations was remarkable Unorthodox Unfortunate A bottom-feeding major league franchise in need of strong leadership and modern vision hired Paul DePodesta who last worked in baseball in a year before Trackman radar device became fully integrated in MLB A group that has lost games in three consecutive seasons hired someone who was last a general manager for the Los Angeles Dodgers in An organization that demands a cultural reset hired someone who helped facilitate the Browns commerce for troubled quarterback Deshaun Watson What is the level of confidence that this will work Low Very low This is not an indictment of DePodesta as much as the timing It is hard not to imagine Dick Monfort flipping through Netflix one night settling on Moneyball and deciding the Rockies had to have that Peter Brand guy the character loosely based on DePodesta s accomplished role in Oakland The book was published years ago It has been years since the movie came out Related Articles Paul DePodesta s fix-it list for Rockies is a long one Paul DePodesta named Rockies president of baseball operations Who is Paul DePodesta What to know about Rockies new head of baseball operations Paul DePodesta to be named Rockies head of baseball operations source says Being light-years behind an industry trend is on brand for the Rockies In that way DePodesta can walk into his Blake Street baseball office with an iPhone in hand and an Ed Harvey T-shirt on and feel like he never left DePodesta is a bright guy Harvard-educated He was not ready for the GM job in Los Angeles Or more accurately the Dodgers were not ready for him Scouts were jealous of a -year-old mockingly calling him boy genius He did not come from the Branch Rickey tree but the Google bandwidth Without internal promotion DePodesta became isolated and a natural fall guy for an awful owner Frank McCourt The same traits DePodesta was once criticized for are now complimented praised coveted Not by Browns fans They have universally cheered his departure Analytics are embraced And no one requirements to strengthen its infrastructure and use of information more than the Rockies But DePo Now DePodesta never severed his relationship with baseball He last worked for the Padres in and his family has lived in La Jolla Calif since That surely makes the president of baseball ops job appealing But going from the Browns to the Rockies The jokes write themselves If Colorado had a sister city in the NFL it would be Cleveland If any other band made this move it would have been panned as the worst in franchise history The Rockies make this move and a multitude of consider it good news At least it was someone anyone from outside the league s most of insular organization It speaks to how low the bar was set by previous general manager Bill Schmidt who failed upward for years and should have been fired in May when manager Buddy Black was canned In my past interactions with DePodesta he was impressive It was just a long long time ago To think that DePodesta has been keeping up to speed with baseball s technological evolution over the last decade is naive negligent Or both And yet for those who want to believe it will work DePodesta has brainpower The question becomes Will he have real power Without autonomy he has no chance Zero Zilch The hope was that Walker Monfort would usher in a new era for the Rockies However his father s fingerprints were all over the hiring process which got weird when Arizona Diamondbacks assistant general manager Amiel Sawdaye and Cleveland Guardians assistant GM Matt Forman fell out of the running either by choice or by finishing behind DePodesta depending on whom you believe DePodesta will be free to hire a GM Bringing in childhood friend Thad Levine would go a long way in making this move make sense The reality is that this job requires a complete house cleaning of roughly people There is little reason to believe Dick Monfort would sign off on such seismic change given his loyalty to longtime employees and the looming work stoppage after the season In the absence of a complete front-office makeover guardrails must be established Follow a flow chart that helped produce the franchise s greatest success in Let DePodesta oversee baseball decisions and review to Walker Monfort And have Walker statement to his dad acting as a buffer just as the late Keli McGregor did between ownership and Dan O Dowd And oh yeah bring on a handful of Rockies from the World Series group as special assistants The notion that DePodesta can pull this off turning the Rockies into a consistent winner would rank right below Theo Epstein winning titles with the Red Sox and Cubs is wishful thinking The Rockies have so inadequate major league players and their minor league system is flawed from a developmental approach The challenge is enormous and DePodesta is most of known for being portrayed by Jonah Hill in a movie That and his -year gap in baseball employment Doing research led me to the bio page for DePodesta on the Browns website It read The page you are trying to reach cannot be ascertained Oh That can t be good The idea was for the Rockies to make a move outside of the batter s box Not outside of their league Want more Rockies news Sign up for the Rockies Insider to get all our MLB analysis