Jared Porter has been fired as general manager of the New York Mets after a report that he sent a female reporter unsolicited explicit texts in 2016.
Mets owner Steve Cohen announced Tuesday that Porter has been terminated as general manager just over one month after he was hired. His firing came in the wake of a report from ESPN on Monday describing how in 2016, Porter sent "explicit, unsolicited texts and images to a female reporter," culminating in him sending "a picture of an erect, naked penis." At the time, Porter worked as director of professional scouting for the Chicago Cubs.
The woman, according to the ESPN report, was a foreign correspondent reporting on Major League Baseball, and she and Porter began communicating "casually" at first. But ESPN writes that Porter soon started "complimenting her appearance, inviting her to meet him in various cities and asking why she was ignoring him," sending explicit photos even after she stopped responding.
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Porter previously acknowledged to ESPN that he texted with the woman but claimed the "more explicit" photos he sent "are not of me" but were "kinda like joke-stock images." He reportedly apologized in 2016 after the woman told him the messages were "extremely inappropriate."
ESPN says it initially obtained the texts in 2017 and interviewed the woman but didn't report the story then because she feared professional repercussions. She has since left journalism and told ESPN, speaking on the condition of anonymity, that her "number one motivation is I want to prevent this from happening to someone else."
Mets president Sandy Alderson previously told ESPN that Porter has "acknowledged to me his serious error in judgment, has taken responsibility for his conduct, has expressed remorse and has previously apologized for his actions." The woman told ESPN, though, that she "never really got the notion that he was truly sorry." Read the full report at ESPN.
