New York Mets team president Sandy Alderson addressed the media on Tuesday afternoon, taking questions from reporters for over a half-hour on the firing of Jared Porter as the team’s general manager following ESPN‘s bombshell report on Monday night.
Alderson shared that he first spoke with Porter around 5:30 PM EST on Monday. In that conversation, Porter confirmed that ESPN would be running a story later that evening. Apparently, that’s all he said.
When asked if the team understood the levity of what was about to be announced, Alderson conceded he did not.
“I wouldn’t say Jared was misleading. However, we didn’t understand the full scope of this situation until we had a chance to read the article,” he said. “I don’t want to suggest that Jared was not totally forthcoming. On the other hand, the full breadth of the situation was not really apparent to us until the article was written and we had a chance to read it.”
“There wasn’t really a good explanation for what happened. I wouldn’t have expected a good explanation for what happened.”
Per ESPN’s report, in 2016, Porter, 41, sent a foreign female sports correspondent unsolicited, explicit images via text message. After reading the article then speaking with Mets owner Steve Cohen early Tuesday morning, Alderson said the decision to terminate Porter came swiftly.
“We agreed the only course of action here was to terminate Jared, which was done within the next 45 minutes,” Alderson said. “With respect to the series of incidents involving Jared, those are the kinds of things that this organization and many others find abhorrent and not tolerable in any shape or form.”
“It’s an unfortunate set of circumstances we weren’t aware of at the time that Jared was hired, and, as I said, only learned last night,” he said. “But suffice it to say, had we known about it in advance — before Jared was hired — it would have been a disqualification.”
Alderson was pressed on the team’s process of vetting Porter ahead of his hire in December. By all accounts, the Mets were bringing on a solid candidate to steer the ship. Needless to say, the organization was caught off guard by Monday’s news.
“I was shocked. We had references from a variety of organizations, a number of individuals, people who had known him for a long time, people who endorsed him, who knew him from his earliest days in college. There wasn’t really a dissenting voice,” he said. “From my standpoint, I was shocked. Eventually, that gives way to disappointment and then a little bit of anger. This was a total surprise to us.”
Alderson noted the team must be more diligent in their hiring process moving forward, but also pointed to the unique circumstances of this situation hindering the Mets’ chances of picking this up ahead of time.
“Given the length of time that’s transpired between the series of incidents and now, I’m confident that this is not something we should have known about, should have found out about, could have used other means to inquire, that we would have known about it,” he said. “To my knowledge, none of the other organizations […] knew about this either.”
Keep it locked onto Metsmerized for continuing coverage of the situation.
