In the last four weeks, three Mets employees (two current, one former) have been accused of sexual harassment.
Brittany Ghiroli and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic report that in addition to general manager Jared Porter and former manager Mickey Callaway, the Mets also fired Ryan Ellis, an organizational hitting coordinator, three days after Porter was terminated.
Porter sent more than 60 unsolicited text messages (many of which were sexual) and photos (including one of a penis) in June 2016 to a female reporter he met only once when employed by the Cubs. ESPN reported that it obtained the texts and pictures in 2017, but did not report on them because the woman feared retaliation from either Porter or her employer. The Mets fired Porter on January 18, 2021.
Two weeks later, on February 1, The Athletic broke the story that Callaway had been "accused of harassing [at least five] female reporters during his tenure with several teams". Callaway was suspended from his job as the Angels' pitching coach the following day.
In Ellis's case, three female Mets employees told the team's Human Resources department in 2018 that he had "made explicit and threatening overtures" to each of them. One woman stated that Ellis told her "I stare at your ass all the time. If only I could have 15 minutes alone with you." Also: "He verbally described what he wanted to do to me. He said that he wanted to put me up against the wall." The woman documented the comments in a journal she kept.
Another woman had a brief sexual relationship with Ellis in 2017, but for months after she ended the relationship, Ellis sent "persistent, unwanted text messages" that were sexual in nature. A third woman reported that Ellis often made sexually suggestive comments to her and other low-level female employees. Ellis would also call her late in the evening and ask if her boyfriend was home.
The Mets claim that these complaints "were investigated properly". That seems highly unlikely, as two of the women never heard anything back from the Mets and one woman did not hear anything until last month. That was when "new information" concerning Ellis emerged and the Mets quietly terminated him on January 22. "They were asking about the relationship part," said one of the women. "They weren't really interested in the harassment. It was about they caught him in a lie."
If Ellis, who was married at the time, had admitted back in 2018 that he had a fling with one of the women, I guess he'd still be working for the Mets. And, presumably, free to harass low-level female employees.
Mets president Sandy Alderson, re Porter: "[T]he full breadth of the situation was not really apparent to us until . . . we had a chance to read [the news article]. . . . Those are the kinds of things that [we] find abhorrent and not tolerable . . ."
Mets president Sandy Alderson, re Callaway: "I was appalled by the actions reported . . . I was unaware of the conduct described in the story at the time of Mickey's hire or at any time during my tenure as general manager."
Mets president Sandy Alderson has not commented re Ellis . . . but I'll bet he will be shocked by them and they are bad and the Mets have no tolerance for stuff like that.
Well, except for, to use one example, when Ellis did it in 2018.
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