Mets should fire General Manager Jared Porter over obscene texts: Sherman

If Carlos Beltran has to go steal a tag outside of last season, then Jared Porter has to go now if the facts in ESPN’s story are true and the new Mets GM in 2016 Send a barrage of unwanted text messages With vulgar overtones for correspondence.

Beltrán committed a baseball crime and did not reach his first opening day as a manager. This would be an offense against decency, power dynamics and common sense by someone with far more regulatory power than Beltran.

The bomb that turned Steve Cohen’s management sense of happiness into a Wilpon-esque free fall came late Monday night. ESPN Story, Who protected the anonymity of the foreign reporter, described in detail a period Porter was director of professional scouts in 2016 as he unleashed a barrage of texts on the reporter, who was new to both the US and covering MLB. It included a stream of texts that lasted for months of meeting attempts away from the field and pictures of a man in pants puffed up at his thigh and also a naked, erect penis.

ESPN provided screenshots of some text and photos of 60 people that had a relentless tone. Porter did not respond to a request from The Post for comment. In the ESPN story, he initially said that he had never submitted pictures, but when he was told that there were selfies too, he told ESPN, “The more vivid the pictures are not from me. These are kind of like the joke pictures.”

In part of his statement, Mets Team Leader Sandy Alderson said: “I spoke directly with Jared Porter regarding the events in 2016 that we were notified of tonight for the first time. Jared has acknowledged to me his grave error in judgment, and took responsibility for his behavior, and he expressed Expressed his remorse, and apologized previously for his actions. “

“We will continue as we review the facts on this serious issue,” Alderson concluded.

But there really isn’t much to do here. If Porter told Alderson that these were indeed his texts and pictures, he could no longer be Mets’ general manager.

Beltran was fired as coach nearly a year ago, a few days after being the only player mentioned in the commissioner’s report about the illegal theft of the Astros banner. Mets decided it was unacceptable to continue with a manager they assumed would be flooded with questions about his integrity, among other things.

So how can the Mets move forward with Porter if these allegations prove true? Not at this time. Not for this organization. Not if you read text messages.

You could say this is a new system, not the system that was in charge last year during the Beltran disaster.

But this new system is managed by Cohen, Who has faced allegations of “me too” In his company Point72 Asset Management; The allegations that were part of some owners’ concern over the approval of Cohen’s purchase of Mets, eventually passed.

Cohen hired Alderson in part due to Alderson’s reputation for excellence in integrity. He was going to be the guy who helped clean up Cohen’s picture. Except for now, Alderson’s first significant appointment made the owner feel as though the owner had changed, but Mets had not. They couldn’t find anyone to take over the head of baseball operations even though all of Cohen’s dollars promised to change the content of the franchise. So, Mets pivoted to hiring a GM only and after the research, Alderson landed on Porter, 41, on Dec.13.

We have to assume that Mets asked Porter if there was anything in his past that would cause problems or embarrassment. In his statement, Alderson said the Mets family learned of the alleged abuse on Monday. Thus, we can assume that Porter told Mets that there was nothing wrong with that. But Porter knew his behavior with the woman (who left the press) was wrong because the texts show attempts to apologize.

Should Mets have known about this from Porter’s examination? It’s hard to install that on them. Porter left the Cubs after the 2016 tournament to become Assistant General Manager for Diamondbacks and that didn’t happen there. Porter has interviewed countless positions at GM, finishing second in the Angels Job before finally landing with the Mets. He had a reputation in the sport for being friendly, hardworking and die-hard when it came to gathering information on players.

But the Mets know what they have in front of them now. If Porter tells them, yeah, these are my texts, and yes, I sent those pictures, how do you keep an organization that wants to scream it’s a new day?

Cohen insisted that integrity would be central to Mets’ business in his ownership. These can’t be just words now designed to cleanse the image. He faces the first property crisis that has emerged in nearly three months on the basis of goodwill Cohen’s willingness to spend money on players and engage in light banter on Twitter.

But this problem cannot be dismissed or ignored with a clever tweet. No, if these claims detailed in the ESPN story are true, Cohen and Alderson only have one option.