Kennedy: Ousted exec’s behavior ‘deeply troubling’
Mets GM booted amid harassment allegations
During his 12 years with the Red Sox, Jared Porter never violated the club’s workplace policies, Sox president Sam Kennedy told the Herald on Tuesday.
Porter, the New York Mets’ general manager who was fired Tuesday after it was revealed he sent unsolicited nude pictures to a female reporter in 2016, got his start in Major League Baseball when he was hired by the Sox as an intern in 2004. He worked his way up to become the director of professional scouting until he left to join the Cubs in 2015.
While the Sox were troubled by what they learned of Porter’s actions from ESPN’s report, his time with the Red Sox never included illicit behavior, as far as the team knew.
“The information detailed in Monday night’s report is deeply troubling,” Kennedy told the Herald via email. “We are not aware of any occasion in which Jared Porter did not comply with our workplace policies during his time as a member of the Red Sox front office. We fully recognize, however, that many instances of inappropriate behavior go unreported. Today, we reiterated to our employees our commitment to a respectful and inclusive environment, and a culture where employees feel comfortable reporting inappropriate behavior without fear of retribution.”
The ESPN report about Porter included quotes from the woman he harassed and screenshots of the text messages he sent while he working in the Cubs’ front office in ’16.
Porter had been messaging the reporter, a foreign correspondent who spoke little English, and trying to get her to hang out with him. She had ignored 62 straight texts from him when he decided to send a naked photo, according to the report.
The woman initially kept it quiet out of fear for what would happen to her, but later met with a Cubs employee to discuss the events.
The Cubs told ESPN on Monday,
“The information detailed in Monday night’s report is deeply troubling.”
SAM KENNEDY Red Sox president and CEO
“we are not aware of this incident ever being reported to the organization.”
Porter was highly-regarded during his time with the Red Sox. After the 2016 World Series, he was hired by the Diamondbacks to rejoin former Sox GM Mike Hazen.
The female reporter later turned down opportunities to travel to Arizona out of fear of running into Porter, she said. She saw him once during the postseason and said she ran away to hide.
Since then, the woman has left the journalism industry altogether and returned to her home country to work in finance.
ESPN said it learned about the texts in 2017 and contacted the reporter then, but she declined to come forward at that time. Now out of the business, she felt compelled to share her story.
“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.”
The reporter will not pursue legal action at this time.
The Mets said they were not aware of the incident until Monday night. They fired Porter on Tuesday morning.