Anthony Bender makes first appearance since Tommy John

JUPITER, FL—Although the Marlins fell to the Washington Nationals in Sunday's spring training game, Anthony Bender won the day. The right-handed reliever made his first game appearance since August 13, 2022 against the Atlanta Braves. He would then undergo season-ending Tommy John surgery and miss all of 2023 as well. On February 25, 2024, Bender took the mound going one inning, gave up one hit, no runs, walked one and struck out one. He threw 19 pitches.

"It was exciting for sure," said Bender following his outing. "It felt really good getting out there."

Bender's velocity never left as his fastball was averaging 96.0 miles per hour. He went with a fastball/slider combo on the afternoon. The lone strikeout he had was against Trey Lipscomb, who he got on the slider.

"Those are my main pitches for sure," said Bender. "We're dabbling with the changeup. We'll see when we break that out, but getting the first three out of the way, getting comfortable and we'll take off from there."

During his time away, Bender explained that he also changed the way that he holds his pitches. "We'll see how those look and how the hitters react to them and then we'll kinda go off of that."

Although he was able to complete the inning, after the first two outs, the 29-year-old righty got into some trouble. He gave up a base hit to Jacob Young, who went on to steal second, and then walked leadoff hitter Alex Call. With runners on first and second, Bender picked off Young at second to end the inning.

"Was just trying to fill up the zone out there and working on some things," said Bender. "All the adrenaline setting in and came out after the walk and was trying to go with a pick here and looked back at (Luis) Arraez and it ended up paying off."

Bender says that he was "itching to get back" in time to contribute for the Marlins during their 2023 postseason run, but wasn't quite able to. His advice to Sandy Alcantara and other pitchers who are going through Tommy John rehab?

"Just listen to your body. Try not to push too fast. When you push too fast, your body pulls back a little bit. So you just gotta listen to your body and go through the proper steps of it."