Ex-Twins minor leaguer Derek Bender denies giving away pitches

Derek Bender, the former Minnesota Twins minor league catcher who is under MLB investigation for telling opposing hitters what pitches were coming, denied the allegations in an interview with The Athletic as he remains out of professional baseball.

“No,” Bender told The Athletic, in an interview published Thursday, when asked if he gave away pitches to opposing batters. “And I’ll live with this until the day I die. I never gave pitches away. I never tried to give the opposing team an advantage against my own team.”

Bender, a sixth-round draft pick out of Coastal Carolina in July, was playing for the Fort Myers Mighty Mussels, the Twins’ Single-A affiliate. In the second game of a Sept. 6 doubleheader, Bender told multiple hitters for the Lakeland Flying Tigers, a Detroit farm team, the specific pitches being thrown by starter Ross Dunn, sources told ESPN at the time.

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Lakeland scored four runs in the second inning and won the game 6-0 to clinch the Florida State League West division and eliminate the Mighty Mussels from playoff contention. Fort Myers coaches were notified by Lakeland coaches about Bender’s pitch tipping after the game, sources told ESPN at the time.

Sources told ESPN that Bender had told teammates he wanted the season to be over. In his interview with The Athletic, Bender said he joked to teammates about letting a ground ball go under their glove, but said he wasn’t serious.

Major League Baseball’s investigation of the incident continues, according to The Athletic, and Bender could face a permanent ban from the league.

“I had to go dark for at least three days,” Bender told The Athletic of the reaction to the initial story. “I had to private all my social media accounts. I was getting death threats and awful, obscene things said to me.”

Bender, 22, said he is trying to get back into professional baseball. He said he’ll play for the Brockton Rox of the independent Frontier League this summer.

Meanwhile, Bender said he hasn’t heard from any of his former teammates, including Ross.

“There are a lot of times where you’re talking with people that you thought you were friends with, they just don’t look at you the same,” Bender told The Athletic. “I’ve heard my friends get questioned about me, why they’re still friends with me. That’s hard to hear.

“It’s not like I’m getting accused of committing a crime.”

Bender told The Athletic that the Twins were willing to keep him in the organization if he admitted to the accusations and apologize. He said he apologized, but he wouldn’t say what he was apologizing for.

“The only thing I had left was my character at that point,” Bender told The Athletic. “Literally, the way they put it was, ‘If you want to die by the sword, we’ll release you.’ I knew there was no bluffing involved.”

His agents at Octagon told The Athletic that they had dropped Bender as a client because they had told him not to do any interviews until the MLB investigation was closed.

“It’s about gaining control over my life,” Bender told The Athletic of why he did the interview. “And this whole situation. I’m not doing this as a last-ditch effort to get back into affiliate ball. It’s more of this is the start of me taking control of my life again. Because I’ve let this completely control me for months now.”

A catcher and first baseman selected with the 188th pick in 2024, Bender signed for $297,500, slightly below the $320,800 slot for that selection. He will keep the entirety of his bonus after playing 19 games for Fort Myers, hitting .200/.273/.333 with two home runs and eight RBIs.

In three seasons at Coastal Carolina, he hit .326/.408/.571 with 32 home runs and 153 RBIs in 144 games.