In the summer of 2018, three women who worked for or had previously been employed by the Mets spoke with a member of the team’s human resources department to complain about the behavior of hitting performance coordinator Ryan Ellis.
One woman told The Athletic that she informed Aubrey Wechsler, then the Mets employee relations manager, that Ellis told the woman that “I stare at your ass all the time. If only I could have 15 minutes alone with you.” The woman, who was in her early 20s, says she read those comments to Wechsler from a journal she kept at the time, copies of which she shared with The Athletic. She says Ellis also told her he wanted “to put her up against a wall.”
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A second woman says she told Wechsler that she and Ellis had a brief sexual relationship in 2017, but that she ended it. For months afterward, she received persistent, unwanted text messages from Ellis that were sexual in nature. The woman, who was in her 30s, says she told Wechsler about those text messages and shared at least one of them with her.
A third woman, who was in her 20s and the first to flag Ellis’ behavior, says she told her supervisor that Ellis often made sexually suggestive comments to her and other low-level female employees and that he would call her late in the evening and ask if her boyfriend was home. She later spoke with Wechsler and relayed that information again, the woman says.
Despite three women alleging inappropriate behavior, it wasn’t until last month, in the wake of the Mets’ firing of general manager Jared Porter for sexual harassment, that the team quietly parted ways with Ellis, now 42, who had been with the organization since 2006. His termination comes after a season in which he served as the major league hitting coordinator.
When asked about Ellis’ exit, the Mets said in a statement: “On January 19 of this year, following the termination of Jared Porter, we received new information regarding conduct of the disciplined employee in the 2017-2018 timeframe. We immediately commenced a new investigation and terminated the employee on January 22 for violating company policy and failure to meet the Mets’ standards for professionalism and personal conduct.”
Asked what had previously been reported to the team about Ellis, the club said: “In July 2018, a complaint regarding inappropriate conduct by a Mets employee was brought to the attention of Mets management at that time. The organization initiated an investigation and, as a result, the employee was disciplined, put into a probationary status, and ordered into counseling. We had not received previous or subsequent complaints about this employee.”
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The club declined to elaborate on the “new information” it received last month.
Ellis, who was married in 2018 when the three women reported his alleged actions to the team, did not respond to requests for comment. His departure surprised a number of Mets employees who had worked with him, with one former associate describing him as “very well-regarded and well-liked” as well as “a model family man.”
Wechsler, who has been with the Mets since 2017 and also holds a law degree, is now the team’s director of employee engagement. When asked if she wished to comment for this story, the Mets passed along a statement that read: “We believe the complaints were investigated properly by our HR personnel and in accordance with our reporting procedures at that time.”
The first woman who raised concerns about Ellis’ conduct toward herself and other lower-level employees said that Wechsler asked for “proof” of wrongdoing such as text messages or photos. She says Wechsler added that if more women came forward her case would be stronger. This woman told another woman she knew who had been harassed by Ellis, she says. Then that woman contacted a former colleague who had also been victimized. Within a week, the two other women had also spoken to Wechsler.
“I don’t like complaining, I don’t think any female in (baseball) does. But when I heard the woman who had already made a complaint was dealing with issues (from the Mets) I said, ‘Well, let me tell you actually he did stuff to other people, including myself,’” said the woman who kept a journal.
The woman who says she received lewd text messages said: “I was like, OK, this is a pattern, I want them (Mets HR) to realize this is a pattern too. Especially (when Ellis is allegedly doing this to) women younger than me. It’s not right.”
The first woman who alerted the Mets about Ellis said that Wechsler called her about two weeks after they first spoke and told her the investigation of him was complete. Wechsler would not disclose any more information. The woman who kept a journal says she never again heard from anyone from the Mets after speaking with Wechsler. The woman who says she got lewd texts and pictures via Snapchat did not hear from anyone with the team until last month. She says Wechsler called her and said the club had “new information” and was reopening its investigation of Ellis. “They were asking about the relationship part. They weren’t really interested in the harassment. It was about they caught him in a lie,” she says.
In addition to allegations made against Ellis and Porter, The Athletic reported on Feb. 1 that five women had accused former Mets manager Mickey Callaway of sexual harassment, and some of those allegations took place during his two years in New York.
In the summer of 2018, when the Mets said they were investigating Ellis, the team also investigated Callaway. That August — about 10 months after Callaway joined the organization — the team said it had learned of an incident that took place before it hired him. The team declined to reveal the nature of the incident, the outcome of that probe or whether Callaway was disciplined. Callaway managed the rest of the season.
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The alleged behavior by Porter, Callaway and Ellis occurred before Steve Cohen purchased the Mets last October. After MLB and the Mets announced that they would investigate the allegations of Callaway’s inappropriate conduct, Cohen called the former manager’s actions “completely unacceptable” and vowed that such behavior “would never be tolerated under my ownership.”
Mets president Sandy Alderson, who was on leave for cancer treatment while the Ellis and Callaway investigations took place, sent Mets employees an email last weekend that detailed plans for a new contact person outside of HR for sexual harassment complaints, among other changes. (Major League Baseball took a similar approach last week.)
Part of Alderson’s email reads: “We are expanding our reporting to provide additional outlets for employees who wish to report behavior inconsistent with our policies and values. In addition to the HR Department and the Legal Department, employees can call an externally hosted hotline. If you choose the hotline, you can decide whether to identify yourself. It is critical that those who observe inappropriate behavior bring it to the Company’s attention. The information brought to our attention through any of these outlets will be taken seriously and will be investigated by the Company.”
The three women who detailed their allegations against Ellis say they wish those changes had been in place when they complained to the team about him in 2018. “I never understood why they didn’t outsource the investigation to begin with,” one woman said. “I think a third party would have handled it much better.”
A former infielder who was a 28th-round pick of the Montreal Expos in 2000, Ellis never rose above Class A as a player, but assumed a variety of roles after joining the Mets’ organization as the first base coach at Triple A midway through the 2006 season. He managed at two different levels of Class A from 2011 to ’14, served as minor-league hitting coordinator in ’18 and ’19 and joined the major-league staff last season after hitting coach Chili Davis opted out because of a preexisting health condition that made him high-risk for COVID-19.
“He did a good job,” one Mets employee said. “He was kind of thrust into it unexpectedly with Chili opting out and (Tom) Slater being pushed to the lead (hitting coach position). But Ryan had a good relationship with our young core, all of our young players, (Brandon) Nimmo, (Michael) Conforto. He either managed them or was their hitting coordinator at the minor-league level.”
The first woman who came forward said she initially planned to keep Ellis’ behavior to herself. However, after she says she witnessed him treating another young woman — an intern on staff — in the same manner, she decided to speak up.
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The second woman, who was briefly in a sexual relationship with Ellis, also said she had no intention of sharing what happened after she ended the relationship, specifically the inappropriate texts and photos she said he sent. “In my mind, I had it under control,” the woman said. “I was like, ‘This is obnoxious but it’s not affecting my day-to-day work. I can handle this.’ But then when I heard he had made other women uncomfortable and they went to HR, I was like, OK, this is a pattern.”
The woman who wrote in her journal about her experience with Ellis said she felt that he took advantage of her youth and inexperience. He asked her to meet for drinks, which she perceived to be a friendly but professional invitation, an assumption made in part because she frequently saw Ellis’ wife around the ballpark. She said she brought along a friend to meet with Ellis.
“This guy is a coordinator. He’s a pretty big deal,” she said. “I thought he was a good guy and it would be a great chance to network.”
The woman said Ellis behaved normally at the bar when she was with her friend. His behavior shifted while she was alone with him in a car after he asked her for a ride to his hotel, she says.
“He verbally described what he wanted to do to me,” she said, reading to The Athletic from her journal entry. “He said that he wanted to put me up against the wall.”
The woman said Ellis asked her what she would do to him and, when she told him she didn’t know, she didn’t think of him that way, he continued to ask “what if.” That is when Ellis told her he “stared at her ass all the time” and said, “If only I could have 15 minutes alone with you.”
She got emotional recalling the incident and told The Athletic she wondered later if it was her fault for driving him home. (Her friend followed them in a second car.) She says Ellis tried to call her and text her after that night but she didn’t respond.
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The woman says that whenever she saw Ellis after that she tried to avoid making eye contact with him and, if they spoke, she tried to keep it short. “That’s not me, I’m a friendly person,” she says. “I loved going to work and then I hated it.”
She recalled once passing him in a hallway and hearing him mention that he had just completed the organization’s sexual harassment training.
There is another moment from that night with Ellis that the woman says she will always remember. As she pulled up to his hotel, Ellis remarked as he exited the car:
“Don’t use my words against me.”
— The Athletic’s Katie Strang contributed to this story.
(Photo of Ryan Ellis in 2012: Mike Janes / Four Seam Images via Associated Press)