SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Progress can be defined in many ways. It all depends on how you look at it – and where you're coming from.
For teams like the Yankees, Mets, Phillies and Blue Jays, winning the World Series is the endgame for the 2026 season. After winning only 43 games last season, the Rockies have a different definition of success.
“We've had some really good momentum within our own building through the course of the offseason and into Spring Training,” said Paul DePodesta, Colorado’s new president of baseball operations. “The vibe here, the positivity, the excitement with where we have a chance to go. If we still feel that way in October, it will be a really successful season.”
DePodesta, the longtime baseball executive who spent the past decade in the NFL as part of the Cleveland Browns’ front office, knows he has an enormous challenge ahead of him. Not only did the Rockies lose 119 games last season, but they play in the most unique home ballpark in the Majors, as the high altitude of Denver makes Coors Field a nightmare for most pitchers.
Can DePodesta be the one to finally crack the code of how to put together a successful pitching staff in Colorado? He knows the magnitude of the task in front of him, and while he doesn’t yet have all the answers, he’s eager to see if he and his front office can figure out how to get the best out of their pitching staff.
“Every team has its own challenges,” DePodesta said. “Even if you're the Yankees or the Dodgers, you have challenges – they're just different than everybody else's. If our challenge is trying to figure out how to win at altitude, that's an interesting challenge. That's an intellectual challenge. That's one you can take on and maybe even overcome; other teams have structural challenges that aren't any fun, that you can't figure out how to overcome.”
Both DePodesta and manager Warren Schaeffer – who had the interim tag removed from his title this offseason – understand how big this undertaking is, and Schaeffer’s message to his pitchers during this journey is simple: Stats won’t necessarily tell the story when it comes to success.
“You have to have a battle mentality of keeping your team in the game,” Schaeffer said. “Just keep your team in the game, keep outdueling the other pitcher; it might be a 6-5 game, it might be a 7-4 game, but keep us in the game and anything can happen.”
DePodesta has spent time with former Rockies pitcher Pedro Astacio, who pitched for Colorado from 1997-2001, picking his brain about the type of pitcher it takes to succeed at Coors Field.
“He said, ‘When I walked across the line, it was just me versus the other team, or even me versus the other guy. My job that day was just to beat him, and if I gave up five but he gave up seven, we win. That’s what this is about,’” DePodesta said. “It's easy to complain as a pitcher, to say, ‘This isn't fair and look what it's doing to my numbers.’ It's another thing for a competitor to say, ‘I'm just here to beat the other guy.’ Having guys with that mentality, from the front office to the coaches to the players, everyone new here is excited about that challenge.”
In the decade DePodesta spent in the NFL, new technology has given baseball teams the ability to gather more information than ever before. It has never been easier to identify how and why a pitch behaves differently in Denver than it does anywhere else, giving the Rockies an opportunity to tinker with a pitcher’s approach and repertoire in a way that wasn’t possible 10 or 15 years ago.
That said, DePodesta knows that information can only do so much. Players have to perform, and he knows the difficulties that can arise from trying to perform while keeping so many things in mind.
“It will just give us way more insight into what exactly is going on and what adjustments we need to make to be successful in that environment, which is very helpful,” DePodesta said. “The one thing I think we all need to be careful of – and this is taking a step further from Coors Field – is that these guys still need to play the game. They need to execute, and it's really, really hard to execute if you're thinking a lot.”
Schaeffer believes it will take some outside-the-box thinking for the Rockies to figure out Coors Field, “and anything is fair game in terms of ideas.” But the manager is also realistic about his team’s historically bad 2025 season. The Rockies were 25-56 at home, but altitude wasn’t a factor in their 18-63 road record.
“Our numbers at home were bad, and our numbers on the road were bad,” Schaeffer said. “At some level, it comes down to playing good fundamental baseball no matter where you are.”
DePodesta won’t put a number on how many wins this season would signify growth for the Rockies in his mind. Playing in the ultra-competitive National League West, he knows there will be plenty of ups and downs in the months ahead.
He’s ready for whatever comes, and he can’t wait to see how his team responds over the 162-game grind.
“Even great teams have challenges through the year, and we're going to have our own, for sure,” DePodesta said. “We expect to be much more competitive. If we're not, that will be a disappointment. I don't have a number in my head of many wins that means; it's more about the feeling.”