Last September I wrote about minor league catcher Derek Bender. He was playing for the Fort Myers Mighty Mussels, the Minnesota Twins’ Low-A affiliate, and was accused after a game of tipping off several hitters for the Lakeland Flying Tigers, a Detroit farm team, regarding the next pitches the Mighty Mussels pitcher was going to throw. Lakeland scored four runs in the second inning to win the game 6-0 and win the Florida State League West division, eliminating the Mighty Mussels from playoff contention.

Lakeland’s coaches alerted Fort Myers coaches regarding Bender’s alleged pitch tipping, and the fact that Bender had told several teammates that he was exhausted and wanted the season to be over was sufficient to convince the organization that Bender had deliberately lost the game for his own team.

The Twins released him. Despite his previous status as a high-rated prospect, the catcher is now a pariah in the game. MLB’s investigation has not been completed, though news stories last fall stated his pitch-tipping as fact. Bender’s agency representing him advised him to make no public statements until there was official report. That seems to have been bad advice: the belief that the player cheated to cause his own team to lose has taken hold as the accepted narrative.

Now he has given an extensive interview to The Athletic, the New York Times sports publication. He says he is innocent of the accusations. Bender met with investigators in November, going over the fateful inning pitch-by-pitch to prove that he was innocent. If the report concludes he did tip off opposing batters to his pitcher’s pitchers, Bender’s baseball career is almost certainly doomed.

There is no question that he told his team mates that he wanted the season to be over as soon as possible, however. Now he says he has reformed. “You’ll never hear that come out of my mouth again,” he told The Athletic. “I’ve worked really hard for this, and I don’t want it all to go away because of one accusation.” At the same time, his attitude regarding his current dilemma does not seem to be wise. “People will think whatever they want to think, whether I say it or not,” he said. “Like let’s be honest. Nobody’s ever going to be here and say ‘Yeah, I did it.’ Most of the time, people are going to deny, deny, deny. People are going to make their decisions, whether I say it or not.”

As Bender waits for MLB’s ruling, he’ll earn $1,200 this summer playing independent ball for the Brockton Rox of the Frontier League. Rox GM Jerod Edmondson had some comforting words: “I think the biggest thing was being willing to give a guy a second chance, to do what he’s trained his whole life to do, and what he loves. I think everybody makes mistakes. He’s 22 years old.”

Yeah, but that “mistake,” telling team mates you don’t want the team to make the play-offs because you’re tired and want to go home followed by the accusation that you helped make sure the team lost so your dream would come true, is not a mistake the world of baseball is likely to tolerate.

Even if the MLB investigation can’t establish for certain that Bender didn’t cheat to harm his own team, it won’t be able to prove that he didn’t, and his damning words to his team mates are a matter of record. He’s not going to be trusted because with his history, he isn’t trustworthy. Baseball executives, managers and players will view this whole mess as signature significance, and it won’t be worth the risk for them to give such a player the benefit of the doubt.

I can’t say that isn’t a responsible conclusion.