Likely looking to set a precedent for his organization, New York Mets owner Steve Cohen, who finished his $2.4-billion purchase of the team in November, is sending a clear message with a move he announced Tuesday morning: one strike and you’re out.
Via his Twitter account, the new owner announced that general manager Jared Porter, who inked a four-year contract with the Mets just about a month ago and was the first major hiring of the Cohen regime, had been fired for inappropriate sexual conduct.
“We have terminated Jared Porter this morning,” 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.”
New York president Sandy Alderson confirmed the firing.
Porter’s firing comes on the heels of an ESPN report published on Monday detailing the 41-year-old’s inappropriate conduct toward a female reporter in 2016 when he was working for the Chicago Cubs in their front office.
After meeting the reporter, a foreign correspondent who was still learning English, in an elevator and getting her business card, Porter went from complimenting her looks and asking her to meet to sending explicit messages, including a picture of “an erect, naked penis,” via text. In all, the woman ignored more than 60 messages from Porter before asking him to stop and eventually returning to her home country after quitting journalism (partially due to the harassment).
Reached by ESPN, Porter initially said he had not sent any pictures of himself but did admit to texting the woman. Confronted with the evidence, he eventually said that “the more explicit ones are not of me. Those are like, kinda like joke-stock images.”
There are some skeletons in Cohen’s closet as well, but they were not enough to prevent him from buying the team.
His former company, SAC Capital Partners, paid $1.8 billion in fines after begin found to have engaged in insider trading in 2013. Also, several discrimination claims have also been filed by women at Cohen’s current firm Point72 Asset Management.
A 2018 claim filed against Cohen’s current firm “painted a picture of a testosterone-fueled boy’s club” in which senior male employees “regularly commented on women’s bodies, openly belittled women and their abilities in meetings and female employees were underpaid compared to their male counterparts,” according to The New York Times.
It will be interesting to see if more details about the culture about Point72 come to light in the wake of Cohen taking such swift action against Porter after his past conduct came to light.
Prior to working for the Cubs and Mets, Porter worked for the Diamondbacks after starting his career in professional baseball with the Red Sox.
“I think what we’ve talked about the most is just a cultural shift, for one,” he said when he was introduced as GM last month. “Adding good people to the organization. Improving on the organizational culture.”
It still may not be great, but New York’s organizational culture has improved by him no longer being a part of it.
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