Moneyball: What Happened To Peter Brand (Aka Paul DePodesta) In Real Life?

The Oakland Athletics were one of the American League's first teams, originating as the Philadelphia Athletics in 1901 before moving to Kansas City in the mid-1950s. The franchise was shifted to Oakland in 1968 and the A's played there until 2024, but change is once again on the horizon: The team is set to move to Las Vegas in 2027 and will play in West Sacramento until their new ballpark in Vegas is finished. Despite their long history, the A's are arguably best known in pop culture for the Moneyball days, a revolutionary period in the early 2000s.

Using an analytic formula called sabermetrics, the A's were able to find affordable players with undervalued skills. The strategy, which became known as Moneyball, allowed them to assemble a championship-caliber team on a tight budget. Leading the team's new approach was General Manager Billy Beane, though he had a lot of help from his assistant Paul DePodesta. The efforts of the duo became the subject of a 2003 book that was later adapted into the Aaron Sorkin/Bennett Miller film "Moneyball," which remains one of the best baseball movies of all time.

The film stars Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, but, bizarrely, Paul DePodesta is nowhere to be found in the story, despite just about every other major character being a real-life person. However, that doesn't mean DePodesta isn't represented in the movie — he was the basis for a new, fictionalized character. So what happened to the real Paul DePodesta? Read on to find out.

Paul DePodesta is a central figure in Michael Lewis' book, "Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game." Unfortunately, DePodesta was never thrilled with how he was portrayed in the story of the A's unconventional approach to recruiting players, and he wasn't happy about all the media attention he was receiving. So when the time came for the film adaptation, DePodesta asked that his character be given a name change, and this led to the creation of Peter Brand, played by Jonah Hill.

Brand is a loose composite of multiple executives working under A's General Manager Billy Beane. Still, those who know DePodesta personally and have worked closely with him, including journalist Jason Reid, say that Brand is mostly DePodesta and is a clear replacement for him in the story. They also note that Brand isn't really that much like the real DePodesta, at least in terms of personality. 

As Reid explained in a 2011 exploration of the film published in The Washington Post, the film "leaves out much of the real story." He states that DePodesta is hardly the fresh-faced, socially awkward executive that Hill portrays. Quite the opposite, in fact: Reid describes him as shrewd and astute. "And he definitely doesn't require help navigating athletic fields, having played baseball and football at Harvard," Reid adds.

Just because Paul DePodesta wanted his name removed from the film doesn't mean he didn't endorse or enjoy it. It was simply that he didn't like the idea of his name being used for a character that wasn't a true reflection of who he is. "However I was going to be portrayed in the movie was going to be how 99.9 percent of the public imagined me to be," DePodesta told Nautilus. "[Audiences] would assume that whatever was in the movie was absolutely true, which it wasn't."

Though he knew that changes would be made to his character for the sake of the story, that wasn't DePodesta's only concern. The other worry was that he knew he'd receive lots of attention from the film — he'd already gotten some when the book was first released, which wasn't enjoyable for someone who never really wanted to be in the spotlight. But despite all of those hesitations, DePodesta never had an issue with the movie, and it was actually the film that helped him appreciate his place in baseball history. "It wasn't until I saw the movie, which put the streak in a historical perspective, where I said, 'Wow, I was fortunate to be a part of that,'" he said.

As for the film itself, DePodesta has no problems with how the Moneyball period is portrayed, telling the Wall Street Journal, "I think for me, it's a lot easier to live with as long as everybody realizes it's a movie. It's not a documentary." It's a smart and pragmatic take on a movie that got so much of the true story wrong.

While "Moneyball" was released in 2011, the events it portrays took place ten years earlier, and Paul DePodesta — like Peter Brand in the film — really was a relative newcomer to the game as a front office executive back then. It's been more than two decades since the A's went on their memorable streak, so what became of DePodesta in that time? The truth is that, following the 2001 season, and particularly after the release of the "Moneyball" book, DePodesta became one of the most sought-after executives in the game.

In 2004, less than a year after the book's publication, DePodesta was poached from the Athletics by another California team, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and given the reins of the team as General Manager. During his tenure the team won a division title, but after the 2005 season, which saw the Dodgers fall to fourth place, he was dismissed. It didn't take him long to get a gig with the Dodgers' intrastate rivals the Padres, brought in by GM Sandy Alderson as a Special Assistant for Baseball Operations.

When Alderson took the job as GM for the New York Mets in 2010, DePodesta went with him, switching coasts and serving as the VP of Player Development and Scouting in Queens. But DePodesta's career took a twist in 2016 when he left baseball altogether, switching to football and joining the front office of the Cleveland Browns as Chief Strategy Officer, a role he holds as of 2025.