Jared Porter, the general manager of the New York Mets, was fired Tuesday after ESPN reported he sent a female reporter sexually explicit and unsolicited texts in 2016.
"There should be zero tolerance for this type of behavior," Steve Cohen, the owner of the Mets, said on Twitter.
The announcement came after ESPN reported Monday evening that the woman, a female correspondent who was unidentified by the network, said at one point she ignored more than 60 messages from Porter before he sent a lewd photo. The Mets did not learn of the texts until the report.
ESPN, which said it had reviewed texts, reported Porter apologized to the woman in 2016 by text after she saw a naked picture and texted that his messages were “extremely inappropriate, very offensive, and getting out of line.”
According to ESPN, Porter said he texted with the woman but initially denied sending any images. He later said the more explicit photos were not of him but were “joke-stock images,” the network reported.
NBC News tried to contact Porter, but has yet to hear back.
Before Porter was fired, Mets president Sandy Alderson released a statement saying that “Jared 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 Chicago Cubs, which employed Porter in 2016, told ESPN they plan to investigate the matter further, adding they were not aware of the incident ever being reported to the organization. NBC has also reached out to the Cubs for comment.
The woman told ESPN she and Porter met once when she was a Major League Baseball reporter and he was the Cubs' director of scouting. The woman said the messages started out casual before Porter began complimenting her looks, inviting her out and asking her why she was unresponsive, the network reported.
She stopped responding to the messages after he allegedly sent a graphic image to her, but the woman's unresponsiveness did not discourage Porter, according to ESPN.
The network obtained the messages in 2017, but did not initially report it because the woman, who was not from the United States and did not speak English fluently, feared backlash from speaking up.
After the baseball reporter requested him to stop sending the “extremely inappropriate” and “very offensive” texts, Porter apologized and stopped communicating with her.
The woman said she declined to pursue legal action and told ESPN she had no plans to do so. According to the network, she returned to her home country and left her journalism career entirely.
The inappropriate texts weren’t the sole reason for leaving the industry, but she told ESPN that the incident made her reconsider her future.
"It's a male-dominated industry. But it was a tipping point for me,” the woman said. “I started to ask myself, 'Why do I have to put myself through these situations to earn a living?'"
Last month, Porter, 41, joined the Mets from the Arizona Diamondbacks, where he was the assistant general manager. He previously worked with the Boston Red Sox and the Cubs, according to a bio on the Diamondbacks' website.
He was the Mets general manager for 37 days.
