The shocking news report about the unsolicited explicit images text messages from New York Mets GM Jared Porter to a female reporter leads you to immediately wonder how long before he’s fired. Once we move past that, we have to wonder how he was in a position to ever receive that job.

Upon reading the excellent reporting of Mina Kimes and Jeff Passan of ESPN, the answer is abundantly clear. The Chicago Cubs weren’t interested in disciplining Porter after the harassment was reported.

In fact, when the harassment was reported, the actions taken by the Cubs was to attempt to set up a meeting to allow Porter to apologize in person. That’s right. Their solution to 62 unanswered texts and sexually explicit images was to set up a meeting with the victim to meet with the man who harassed her.

Reading deeper, this wasn’t just about an apology. As detailed in the article, the Cubs were afraid of a lawsuit:

The employee, she said, encouraged her to use the situation to her advantage. She said he pressed her numerous times on whether she planned to file a lawsuit against Porter.

The response here was not to fire Porter. It wasn’t to suspend him. No, it was to make sure there was no lawsuit. Certainly, keeping the talented scout was of interest to what could only be described as a morally bankrupt organization.

When asked about this situation by ESPN, the unnamed Cubs employee said he was “listening to both” and didn’t want to take any sides. Imagine that for a moment – not wanting to take a side in opposition of harassment.

Perhaps, we shouldn’t be surprised this was the Cubs response. Remember, just months earlier to her reporting the harassment, the Cubs traded for Aroldis Chapman. That was the same season which Chapman served a domestic violence suspension.

We also saw how they supported Addison Russell. The first allegations of abuse did not give rise to action. After it became known, Russell was suspended by Major League Baseball, and the Cubs still kept him.

The Cubs were willing to tolerate Russell’s domestic violence, but they drew the line at his .699 OPS. Now that, that was unacceptable for the Cubs.

This is what the Cubs organization was and may still be. They set out to win at all costs no matter who was hurt along the way.

They may want to hide behind not winning a World Series in 108 wins, but that’s cowardly. Women need to be harmed for a team to win baseball games. More than that, your empathy and compassion should not be in direct ratio to your last ring.

Given how the Cubs are operated and how they took no action to fire Porter, they need to be put under investigation. Major League Baseball did it for the Houston Astros, and they can do it here.

That includes Theo Epstein who was the Cubs President of Baseball Operations. He’s currently a consultant for MLB. Given what we know of how he operated the Cubs, we will need a real exoneration of him here before he can assume another job in the sport.

Keep in mind, the Cubs doing nothing led to Porter getting a job with the Arizona Diamondbacks before he was hired as the Mets GM. The Cubs inaction allowed Porter to rise through the ranks and helped force a woman out of baseball.

This whole situation was of Porter’s making with his heinous actions and of the Cubs complete and purposeful inaction. But hey, in the end, no lawsuit was filed, so they accomplished what they set out to do.

Commissioner Rob Manfred has to take action. He needs to investigate how Porter could have gone unpunished after the harassment was reported. He then needs to take decisive action against the Cubs organization.

Anything less is unacceptable.