The New York Mets have fired general manager Jared Porter after a bombshell ESPN report revealed that the 41-year-old sent lewd and explicit text messages to a female reporter while he was the director of player scouting for the Chicago Cubs in 2016.
“We have terminated Jared Porter this morning,” Mets owner Steve Cohen wrote. “In my initial press conference, I spoke about the importance of integrity and I meant it. There should be zero tolerance for this type of behavior.”
Porter was hired on Dec. 13 as general manager of the Mets, nearly five years after the inappropriate text exchange with the woman who chose to remain anonymous to protect her reputation in her home country. She has since left the journalism field.
According to the report, the reporter ignored over 60 text messages from Porter, including 17 photos on Aug. 11, 2016, that began with the former Mets GM asking her to meet him in Los Angeles. The first 15 photos were of his hotel and restaurants in the city before a 16th depicted a bulge in his pants. The 17th photo was of a naked, erect penis.
“The New York Mets have terminated General Manager Jared Porter, effective immediately,” team president Sandy Alderson said in a formal statement later on Tuesday morning. “Jared’s actions, as reflected by events disclosed last night, failed to meet the Mets’ standards for professionalism and personal conduct.”
Porter told ESPN that he did indeed send text messages to the reporter but said “the more explicit ones are not of me. Those are like, kinda like joke-stock images.”
ESPN initially learned of these text messages in 2017 but did not receive permission from the woman to run the story until now.
“My number one motivation is I want to prevent this from happening to someone else,” she told ESPN through an interpreter. “Obviously he’s in a much greater position of power. I want to prevent that from happening again. The other thing is I never really got the notion that he was truly sorry.
“I know in the U.S. there is a women’s empowerment movement. But in [my home country], it’s still far behind. Women get dragged through the mud if your name is associated with any type of sexual scandal. Women are the ones who get fingers pointed at them. I don’t want to go through the victimization process again. I don’t want other people to blame me.”
Porter is married to the daughter of Brian Burke, the president of hockey operations for the NHL’s Calgary Flames.
Zack Scott, who was hired as the Mets’ assistant GM in late December, is an immediate candidate to fill the role left vacant by Porter’s firing.
This story originally appeared on amny.com.
