FanHouse Paul DePodesta

SAN DIEGO -- If there were any doubts that Kevin Towers was a baseball lifer, they were answered on his wedding day.

Just before exchanging vows with his wife in December 1996, the Padres general manager exchanged players with Tigers GM Randy Smith, a member of his wedding party.

"Any time you get baseball people together, especially general managers, regardless of what the venue is or what the situation is, baseball will come up," Towers said. "We started talking about players while we were waiting for my wife to show up. She was running a little late, so we decided to consumate a deal, about 30 minutes before our wedding vows."

Although I have been hearing for a while that the best-selling book Moneyball" was going to be made into a movie, I never really believed it until seeing on Tuesday that they continue to add actors. I had always assumed that, somewhere along the line, some studio executive would look at that book and say "Uh, that doesn't sound like a very interesting movie to me."

"The whole concept to me is just surreal at this point," former A's assistant GM Paul DePodesta told FanHouse. "Maybe I'll feel different once I see it. It's hard for me to believe this is actually happening. I've been in denial for the past five years. I told Billy that when the movie comes out and people say 'It's not as good as the book,' they are going to be talking about our real lives."

It was a great book, one that all seam-heads like me thoroughly enjoyed. However, there doesn't seem to be much to attract the other 99 percent of the movie-going public.

So, here are my Top 10 Ways To Make Moneyball A More Interesting Movie...

Michael Lewis' book about Billy Beane's strategy in making a small-market team successful in Major League Baseball, "Moneyball," is going to be made into a feature-length movie. Shooting isn't set to begin until June, but many of the key players are being put in place. Brad Pitt is going to play Oakland A's general manager Beane (the two are pictured side-by-side here) and Steven Soderbergh will be the director.

Now, according to variety.com, Demetri Martin has been added to the fray, and he'll play Paul DePodesta, currently employed by the Padres, but formerly the Dodgers general manager and Beane's assistant GM in Oakland.

Left on Base is MLB FanHouse's link dump.

* There's been plenty of talk about Mark McGwire lately, what with the Hall of Fame vote last week, and his long lost (estranged?) brother seems ready to cash in on it. From Deadspin comes the news that Jay McGwire has been shopping a tell-all book that will detail, among other things, how he got Mark hooked on steroids and how he "crashed and found God." Don't worry it probably won't be on our Amazon pre-order list either.

* Curt Schilling will expand his role on Boston radio station WEEI in the coming year. Good, Schilling talking more is just what everyone wanted. All joking aside, does this mean the big fella is retiring?

Just in case you weren't convinced that the Padres were serious about trading Jake Peavy, you might want to take a look at Paul DePodesta's blog. DePodesta, the former Dodgers GM who currently resides in San Diego's front office as an adviser to Kevin Towers, explained how teams have frequently managed to improve immediately after losing their best player:

* The 2008 Indians were 37-51 when they traded CC Sabathia, and then went 43-30.
* The 2007 Twins finished 79-83, traded Johan Santana and let Torii Hunter leave in free agency, and then went 88-75 in 2008.
* The 2003 Rangers finished 71-91, traded Alex Rodriguez, and then went 89-73 in 2004.
* The 1996 Giants finished 68-94, traded Matt Williams, and then went 90-72 in 1997.

[...] On a personal level, we don't enjoy trading players. I don't know any executive who does. However, that just isn't the reality of today's game. Because of that fact, the best organizations out there can't really believe in the concept of "untouchable", because one can lose great opportunities with such blinders.

Just like I said earlier this week, the Padres should be able to get back a nice haul of talent if they trade Peavy, who's not only one of NL's most consistent aces but also signed through 2012. It's no wonder that teams are apparently chomping at the bit to get Padres Towers on the phone -- the Yankees have reportedly had preliminary talks (despite Peavy's previous suggest that he'd block a trade to the AL), the Braves are allegedly already having serious talks and the Mets are thinking about throwing their hat in the ring. Where there's smoke, there's fire, and DePodesta is fanning the flames.

It was pretty cool to learn over the weekend that former Dodger GM and current Padre exec Paul DePodesta started his own blog. He knows his baseball, obviously, and the chance to see how the braintrust of a baseball team gets their work done isn't something we come across every day.

In addition to those workings, the other two things I was most looking forward to reading about were DePodesta's views on the rest of baseball and his star-crossed tenure with the Dodgers. Alas, it wasn't meant to be.

1) Per MLB rules, I am not able to discuss players from other teams. Therefore, if you ask me about trade rumors or what I think of other players, etc, I can't answer.
2) There have been a lot of questions regarding my time at the Dodgers that I haven't published. I am simply not permitted to speak about anything relating to the Dodgers. Sorry. I didn't want you thinking that I was blowing off all of those questions.

He is allowed to talk about his favorite Pinot Noirs however. He thinks the 2005 Talley Vineyards is drinking really nicely and enjoys it with lamb chops. Also he loved Iron Man!

Obviously, tampering concerns and, I'm guessing, a non-disclosure agreement are keeping him silent on the other fronts. That's understandable but too bad. I'd still love to hear him explain how trading Paul Lo Duca and Guillermo Mota for Brad Penny was such an egregious personnel error that Ned Colletti now has his job.

(H/T SportsbyBrooks)

It was just a few weeks ago, that, this piece in the New Republic about Barack Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe, I thought: hmm. This sounds familiar. Plouffe is the sober, focused advisor, while Obama is the incredibly gifted face of the franchise, as it were. I didn't give it too much deep thought, but it sounded like Moneyball-era Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta. Turns out, that whim wasn't far off the mark.

Today, The Politico has a story about Barack Obama's "Bill Jamesesque" delegate counter, Jeffrey Berman. By quietly dealing solely with delegate math, Berman has helped the Obama campaign cut through the mess of competing all-or-nothing primaries, winning the nomination where it really counted: the delegates. The symmetry to sober-minded sabermatricians using new math for insightful, predictive baseball analysis is kind of eerie:

A glimpse at Berman's, and the campaign's, detailed, Bill-Jamesesque approach to the game of politics came in a spreadsheet the campaign sent to Bloomberg reporters, it said inadvertently, on Feb. 5. The spreadsheet had estimates of the outcomes and delegate counts in every state; it has called the winner wrong just twice.

As Craig Calcaterra writes, the Bill James parallels run deep, even down to James's trademark beard. One more similarity: winning. Obama's done it. The A's have done it (in the regular season). The Red Sox have done it. It's probably not all that coincidental.

Paul DePodesta is pretty well known for a guy that hasn't been a GM for almost three years now. He had a supporting role in Moneyball as Billy Beane's Ivy League stat-geek assistant GM and his two years as GM in LA was marked by his feuding with the McCourt's, manager Jim Tracy, and Bill Plaschke, only to be dismissed just a year after helping the Dodgers to the NL West title. Since then, he's worked as an assistant in San Diego's front office and he's just started his own blog:

I began thinking about hosting a blog about a year ago, and back in January I took the first big step by starting an internal blog for employees of the Padres. The idea all along was to someday create an external blog to engage in a direct dialogue with our fans. Well, given the events of the past few weeks, that "someday" is now.

[...]

So, I'm here, and I'd like to be a part of the conversation. I'll do my best to reply to comments/questions, though I can't promise punctual responses or regular posts. After all, just like everyone else out there, I already have a job. :-)

It's a pretty ballsy move to start a blog when you work for a team that's badly under performing like the Padres are right now. Still, it's really cool to see a front office make a move like this, offering the fans some insight into their day-by-day operations. If you look at the comments, DePodesta answers some questions and gives fans an idea of what's to come on his blog. I doubt, DePo will be able to go too into depth on some issues, but it's still a really cool idea that newspaper columnists all over California will hate.

Hat-tip to BBTF