“I'll live with this until the day I die. I never gave pitches away,” Bender told The Athletic for a story published on Thursday. “I never tried to give the opposing team an advantage against my own team.”
Major League Baseball has been investigating the situation, according to The Athletic. After Bender, a sixth-round draft pick in 2024 out of Coastal Carolina, was released by the Twins on Sept. 12, ESPN in its report said Bender had told teammates he wanted the season to be over.
Bender told The Athletic he was exhausted at that point of the year but that he was joking about tanking to try to ensure defeat.
“A lot of us are coming off of college seasons, coming off of a pretty grueling summer schedule,” Bender said in the interview. “Then you get there and you're hitting .200, you're facing some of the best stuff consistently you've ever seen. You're sinking or swimming, and you're pretty close to sinking. The conversations are that everybody's ready to go home.”
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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB