He previously served as a front office assistant for the Cleveland Indians, Oakland Athletics, and New York Mets of Major League Baseball (MLB).

[1] He attended Episcopal High School ('91) and then Harvard University, where he played baseball and football and graduated in 1995 with a degree in economics.

He is often considered part of a new breed of front office executives whose personnel decisions depend heavily on analysis of performance data, often at the perceived expense of more traditional methods of scouting and observation.

[4] DePodesta was heavily criticized in the local and national baseball media for this trade, because Lo Duca was thought to be the "heart and soul" of the team.

Bill Murphy was traded that year to acquire Steve Finley, who hit 13 homers in 58 games, including a memorable grand slam that clinched the division title.

Drew enjoyed two productive seasons as a Dodger and then used an opt-out clause in his contract to sign a new 5-year deal with the Boston Red Sox.

Many of the players lost to injury were expected to produce heavily for the team, including J. D. Drew, Milton Bradley, Éric Gagné, Jayson Werth, César Izturis and Odalis Pérez.

Reports surfaced that the real reason McCourt had fired DePodesta was his inability to find satisfactory managerial candidates to replace Jim Tracy.

On June 30, 2006, DePodesta was hired as the special assistant for baseball operations for the San Diego Padres and was promoted to executive vice president on November 10, 2008.

[7] On January 5, 2016, DePodesta was hired by the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League (NFL) as their chief strategy officer.

He has also served as a keynote speaker at numerous business conventions and been covered by publications such as Baseball Prospectus and Fortune Magazine.

[15] In 2003, author Michael Lewis was interested in how Oakland Athletics general manager (GM) Billy Beane tried to find quality players to improve the team while struggling with one of the smallest payrolls in Major League Baseball.

He first wanted to write an article on the subject, but the idea eventually blossomed into a book[16] named Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.

Lewis's interests included how Beane hired DePodesta as his assistant to incorporate sabermetrics, an approach that consists of more sophisticated analyses of baseball statistics, which is at least partially credited for their 2002 20-game winning streak which set an American League record.

Bill James, who coined the term sabermetrics for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), is also a major focus.

Brand is a composite of Beane's assistants[29] in Oakland, not an accurate representation of any specific person,[27] but Moneyball's director, Bennett Miller, has credited DePodesta for being generous and helpful in the making of the film.