LAS VEGAS — Paul DePodesta has returned to a brave new world.
It’s been more than two decades since the Rockies’ new president of baseball operations became the poster boy for a new generation of analytic thinkers who helped revolutionize Major League Baseball. DePodesta, of course, was the inspiration for Jonah Hill’s character, Peter Brand, in the movie “Moneyball” about the 2002 Oakland A’s, who won 102 games and captured the AL West despite a relatively small payroll.
But that was long ago and far away.
DePodesta is 10 years removed from working in baseball and enters a landscape filled with new contraptions and enough analytical data to make any number-cruncher’s head spin.