IT STARTS AT HOME, SANDY
After Porter, Mets in ‘capable’ hands
The Mets are rolling up their sleeves and attempting to move on from their second offseason scandal in as many years, turning their attention to a new front-office structure without Jared Porter.
The former Mets GM was fired on Tuesday morning after an ESPN report revealed the 41-yearold sent unsolicited texts and graphic images to a female foreign correspondent nearly five years ago. Team president Sandy Alderson first learned of the report on Monday, when Porter apologized without fully explaining his inappropriate behavior.
“Look, this is a wake-up call,” Alderson said in a press conference Tuesday. “It clearly suggests that something like this can be out there in connection with anyone.”
With pitchers and catchers scheduled to report to spring training in less than a month, the team will not hire a replacement for Porter and move forward with the front-office group currently in place.
Assistant GM Zack Scott is expected to be promoted to fill Porter’s role. Scott had spent the past 17 seasons with the Red Sox, including overseeing their analytics and professional scouting departments. He worked alongside Porter in Boston for 10 years before the Mets hired him in December. Alderson said Tuesday he would more clearly define the club’s top brass in the coming days.
“We’re on a certain trajectory, I think a successful one to this point,” Alderson said, pointing toward the Mets’ busy offseason that’s helped fill necessary holes on their roster. “While Jared presents a void, I’m very confident that the group that we have can move forward effectively.”
Besides Scott, former interim Mets GM and longtime senior vice president of baseball operations John Ricco is one of Alderson’s trusted advisors in the current front-office structure. He represents another option to be elevated to the GM position. Alderson and Ricco worked together in the president’s previous stint as Mets GM from 2010-18. Ricco has a broader role in baseball operations now; he’s part of the team’s eight-person daily baseball opps meetings.
Though Alderson is happy with his current cabinet, the 73-yearold admitted Porter’s absence leaves a large crater in their dayto-day flow.
Porter previously worked for the Red Sox, Cubs and Diamondbacks and brought with him a large pool of industry contacts. Alderson said Porter’s “rich source of information” had allowed the Mets to make smaller deals, like their recent acquisition of pitcher Joey Lucchesi from the Pirates, to fill out their roster depth.
Porter was hired in December and was the GM for just 37 days. He participated in the Mets’ blockbuster trade acquisition for superstar shortstop Francisco Lindor earlier this month. Alderson was enjoying the way his new leadership team had developed and begun to work together, with Porter primarily taking the lead before he was ostracized from the club for his conduct with the female reporter.
“Jared was very energetic, he was knowledgeable,” Alderson said. “And I was really happy with the direction we’d taken. So that’s a secondary consequence of this situation.”
The Mets had long-term plans of molding Porter into a lead president of baseball opps role, but Alderson always considered himself the point person in that department even when Porter was on board. The veteran baseball executive said his attention to the baseball side will increase somewhat without Porter, and he doesn’t expect the team to take any steps back in terms of roster makeup in the aftermath of the scandal.
“We’re very capable,” Alderson said. “We just have to shift.”