Chris Lynch looks at Paul DePodesta’s moves as Dodgers GM. The record is a pretty solid one, not worthy of getting him fired, although you can argue that, for example, the Derek Lowe and Jeff Kent signings are worse in combination than taken separately, given that Lowe requires a good middle infield defense. (On the other hand, Lynch doesn’t discuss the non-signing of Adrian Beltre, which doesn’t look that bad right now). And it does seem that DePodesta botched some of the other parts of the job, specifically backing out of deals that other GMs thought they had with him, a problem that may have resulted from the Dodgers’ decisionmaking process. That smells like a combination of rookie mistake and perhaps meddling by ownership.
On the whole, I’d be glad to have DePodesta running my team. And, hey: he was a great #2, and Jim Duquette is gone . . . the Mets could do far worse than trying to get him on board, although he is doubtless looking for another #1 job.
5 thoughts on “DePodesta Evaluated”
Comments are closed.
According to DePo and his defensive metric of choice, Kent’s fielding is “neutral.”
Anyone think it is possible Theo Epstein who reportedly agreed to a contract, but has had no announcement of same with the Sox might end up in LA?
Epstein life was made so miserable that he resigned. What in the world is going on when these owners force out or remove good young GMs. Didn’t Epstein’s team wn the World Series in 2004? Didn’t DePodesta’s team get into the playoffs last year for the first time in many years? They didn’t have enough time to develop their farm systems, or make major organizational changes. Epstein got a lot of key players on the world championship team for little or nothing. He made a key trade in the middle of the 2004 season to propel them to a world championship (DePodesta made a similar trade in 2004 that helped the team make the playoffs). Wouldn’t you bend over backwards to keep these guys in your organization? This only proves what we already know about most baseball owners. They think they know a whole lot more about baseball than they really do.
The story with Epstein is even worse than what GEB4000 describes. He left because team management (Larry Lucchino) leaked a negative story about Epstein to the Boston Globe after the two sides agreed to a deal. I have the whole story on my blog.
As a big Redsox fan i would love to see depo come to boston, and i wish theo the best of luck. Niether of these two young GM’s where given enough time to work out there master plans. a GM needs more then 3 years to build his team. here’s hope’n Depo comes to boston. Best of luck theo.