'Part of the game': Pitcher painkiller habits exposed at Skaggs wrongful death trial

SANTA ANA, Calif. (CN) — Mike Morin, a onetime friend and teammate of deceased Los Angeles Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs, took the stand Tuesday during the wrongful death civil trial brought by Skaggs’ family, providing a rare behind-the-curtain look at the arduous life of a big league ballplayer, the stresses felt by trying maintain a toehold at the highest echelon of the game and nuanced reasons for both his and Skaggs’ illicit drug use.

Skaggs’ surviving wife and parents are suing the Angels, saying the organization knew that one of its employees, communications director Eric Kay, was not only a drug addict but also selling pills to numerous players. They argue it was negligent to allow Kay to travel with the team to Texas in 2019, when he sold Skaggs a counterfeit oxycodone pill laced with fentanyl that led to his fatal overdose.

Kay is currently serving 22 years in federal prison for his part in the death. Now the Skaggs family is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars from the Angels for their liability.

Much of the trial, now in its second month, has turned on the actions of the organization in response to Kay’s behavior: How many people knew he was a drug addict? Should he have been fired? And who knew he was selling pills to players? This week, rather belatedly, the focus has shifted to Skaggs.

On Monday, his widow, lead plaintiff Carli Skaggs, and his mother, Debbie Hetman, gave emotional testimony about Skaggs and his history of prescription pill usage — which, not surprisingly, the two women played down. Yes, Skaggs had an “issue” with Percocet, an opioid painkiller, in 2013. But his family pulled together and helped him quit “cold turkey,” Hetman said.

Angels lawyers have tried to get witnesses to admit that they have been downplaying the extent of Skaggs’ drug abuse. He was, after all, drinking and snorting Kay’s counterfeit pills the night he died. On Monday, attorneys showed the court a series of text messages sent by Skaggs to Morin in 2018, less than a year before his death. In one, Skaggs wrote: “Haha I’m about to crush a blue right now.” In another text shown to the court on Tuesday, Skaggs wrote: “Blue boys [make] you sleep good.” Morin confirmed that the term referred to 30-milligram pills of Oxycontin, a large dosage of a powerful opioid that the two players were obtaining from Kay.

The Angels lawyers have sought to imply that Skaggs was essentially partying, taking drugs and drinking to have a good time. But Morin’s testimony suggested that the pills were more about fighting the pain — pain they felt from doing their job, from pitching.

“It was a temporary solution that would be discrete, that I would be able to do my job,” Morin said. “It’s part of the game. If you’re in pain, you just take a pill and go do it. It’s not anything beyond that. I didn’t love it. I didn’t want to be doing that.”

Taking pills became part of his recovery routine, no less crucial than sitting in a hot tub after a game, although it was one he felt the need to keep a secret from his wife and family. Morin again became emotional when he tried to explain the pressures felt by MLB players.

“No one else can possibly understand,” Morin said, tears in his eyes. “It’s the immense highs and immense lows. No one outside that room can fully understand. But what it feels like to devote your life to something and fail … There’s not a whole lot of people that can understand what it takes to get there and to stay there and to deal with all this stuff that you’re pretty much doing for the first time.”

Morin sought out illicit pain medication after suffering a freak injury. It was Skaggs who told Morin that he could obtain oxycodone pills from Kay.

When asked how he would ingest the pills, Morin replied, “Most of the time I would bite it off, but there were times where I would end up snorting it as well.” According to Morin, Skaggs also regularly snorted pills. In fact, it was his “preferred method.”

Both sides wanted to call Morin, a journeyman pitcher who played for six teams between 2014 and 2020. His biggest stint was as a middle relief pitcher for the Angels. He was roughly the same age as Skaggs, and the two became close.

“There was something about Tyler,” Morin said, fighting back tears. “He was a light. People gravitated to him whether they were aware of that or not. He had an energy about him that was uplifting.”

Under cross-examination, Angels attorney Todd Theodora pressed Morin about a series of text messages showing that at least once, Skaggs bought pills from Morin after Kay’s supply had been exhausted. It was another opportunity for Theodora to shift blame away from Kay — and the Angels — and onto Skaggs.

“You never saw that Eric Kay was some major drug dealer,” Theodora said. “You knew that Eric Kay was doing this on his own time, in secret. No one from Angels baseball, in any way, shape or form, was involved in you and Tyler doing drugs.” Morin agreed.

Later, referring to the night that Skaggs died, Theodora asked, “Do you believe Tyler was responsible for the decision he made to chop up and snort opioids that night?”

After a long pause and a pained facial expression, Morin answered: “I think that he is responsible for his actions.”

Prior to Morin’s testimony, Angels attorney Elizabeth Lachman finished her cross-examination of Debbie Hetman. Lachman suggested that after Skaggs’ death, Hetman had tried to keep her son’s drug usage under wraps in order to pave the way for her lawsuit against the Angels. Lachman pointed to a medical examiner’s report that stated Skaggs had “no history of illicit drug use and drank socially.” Lachman asked Hetman why she hadn’t told the medical examiner about her son’s history of drug abuse.

“I don’t remember anyone at the morgue coming to see me,” Hetman said with a hint of agitation. “I had just lost my son. I was devastated. I had just come from the morgue, looking at my son’s lifeless body. That’s the kind of picture — it’s a constant nightmare for me. I never spoke to anyone at the medical examiner’s office.”

The plaintiffs are expected to rest their case at the end of the week, on Friday. The Angels will begin calling their own witnesses, including Hetman, the week after Thanksgiving.

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