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.

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.

Chicago Cubs second baseman Nico Hoerner won’t be going to Japan where the team opens the regular season next month, manager Craig Counsell announced on Thursday.

Hoerner, 27, is still recovering from offseason arm surgery and will miss the two games against the Los Angeles Dodgers in Tokyo.

“Its good news because we were very much tracking towards opening day — domestic opening day,” Counsell said. “So it stinks in terms of not getting to be part of the trip, but his rehab in the last couple of weeks I think really took a step forward and he’s starting to progress quicker.”

Hoerner had surgery on his right flexor tendon back in October. He’s on track for an April return — but not for the mid-March beginning of the regular season. The Cubs and Dodgers play games on March 18-19, but the teams will be in Japan for about a week, eating up precious training/rehab days for Hoerner.

“He can’t play in games there and he needs at-bats,” Counsell explained. “He needs to be a baseball player, and the trip just does not allow for him to that in the proper way.”

Hoerner will stay in Arizona, playing in minor league games while the Cubs are in Japan. Counsell indicated back-ups Vidal Brujan or Jon Berti will likely start in Hoerner’s place.

The team also needs to make a decision on third baseman Matt Shaw, who has been slowed by an oblique issue throughout the first month of spring training. Shaw is scheduled to see his first game action this weekend. If he can’t play in Japan, Berti or Bruján — along with Rule 5 pick Gage Workman — will be candidates at third base.

“Nothing is off the table for Matt,” Counsell said. “No decisions have been made there.”

INDIANAPOLIS — Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter said Thursday it is “super important” to him to be the No. 1 pick in April’s NFL draft and that he is ready, willing and uniquely able to play on both sides of the ball in his professional career.

Simply labeled as “DB 15” at the NFL scouting combine this week, the University of Colorado cornerback/wide receiver said the possibility of being the first overall pick has certainly crossed his mind.

“That’s super important,” Hunter said. “That was one of my dreams, to go No. 1.”

Hunter was a must-see performer as college football’s most prominent and proficient two-way player in decades, especially this past season when he won college football’s highest individual honor. On offense, Hunter had 92 catches for 1,152 yards and 14 touchdowns.

And on defense, he had 33 tackles, 4 interceptions, 10 pass breakups and a forced fumble. In Colorado’s regular-season finale against Oklahoma State, Hunter became the only FBS player over the past 25 seasons with three scrimmage touchdowns and a defensive INT in a single game, per ESPN Research.

Hunter played 1,380 snaps overall in 12 games for Colorado this past season, including 670 on offense, 686 on defense and 24 on special teams. It was 382 more snaps than the next-most active player in the FBS and he topped 100 snaps in 10 of Colorado’s 12 games.

Hunter also played 1,007 snaps for Colorado in the 2023 season. He said Thursday he was hopeful whichever team calls his name on the draft’s opening night will allow him the chance to play on both sides of the ball.

“I’ve been doing it for a long time, so I feel like I can keep doing it,” Hunter said. ” … That’s not my job to figure it out. I’d like to play both. If they give me the opportunity to play both sides of the ball, I’ll play both sides.”

Hunter, who has been grouped with the defensive backs at the combine for meetings, medical exams and team interviews, contended he is still “listed at both” defensive back and wide receiver in Indianapolis. He also said some teams have already interviewed him at the combine as primarily a wide receiver and some teams have interviewed him primarily as a cornerback.

“Nobody has done it, but I feel like I put my body through a lot,” Hunter said. “People don’t get to see that part, what I do to my body to make sure I’m 100% for each game … but I know I could do it … because I’ve done it at the college level.”

Asked if he would push back if his future coaches in the NFL said he could play only offense or defense exclusively, Hunter added: “I would hope they would let me go out there and earn the other position.”

Many in the league have said the biggest issue for Hunter in the NFL in any attempt to play extensively on both sides of the ball would be managing his snap count in games as well as structuring practice time, and the wear and tear that comes with that in a 17-game season, as well as his schedule given offensive and defensive position groups meet separately during the same time periods in a day.

The league’s Defensive Player of the Year — Denver Broncos cornerback Pat Surtain II — played 902 snaps in 16 games this past season after logging 1,106 snaps (17 games) in 2022 and 1,121 (17 games) in 2023. Those totals aren’t far from the total snaps Hunter played in all phases in 2024.

Hunter said he has told teams he has a routine he follows in his preparation for games and in his recovery to continue to play offense and defense in the NFL.

“They say nobody has done it for real the way I do it,” Hunter said. “I tell [teams] I’m just different. … I didn’t have no load management at Colorado, coach [Deion Sanders] would pretty much let me do what I felt was right for my body. I’m the only person that knows what’s right for my body. … I always woke up early to get to do what I needed to do.”

Hunter added Thursday he had not spoken much to Sanders, who was also Hunter’s coach at Jackson State, in recent weeks because “he’s been giving me my space and letting me go through this stuff by myself.”

Hunter has called his relationship with Sanders an “unbreakable father-son bond.”