Widow of Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs denies knowing her husband had drug problem

SANTA ANA (CN) — On the stand Monday, the surviving wife of Los Angeles Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs, Carli Skaggs, said she never suspected her husband was taking illicit opiates or abusing pills before he died of an accidental drug overdose in 2019.

Carli Skaggs and Tyler Skagg’s parents are suing the Angels for negligence and wrongful death, accusing the organization of knowing that one of its spokesmen, Eric Kay, was a drug addict and was routinely selling opioid pills to players on the team.

Kay is currently serving 22 years in federal prison for selling Skaggs the counterfeit, fentanyl-laced Oxycodone pill at led to his death. The Angels have said they knew little about Kay’s drug use and nothing about his drug dealing, and have sought to shift the blame for the tragic death onto Skaggs himself, who was drinking and snorting opiates the night he died.

“You would agree with me, in your mind, that Tyler must have been strongly addicted?” asked Angels attorney Elizabeth Lachman during cross-examination.

“No,” Carli Skaggs replied.

The only inkling, she said, that Tyler Skaggs had ever had a drug problem was after he had Tommy John surgery, a common procedure amongst major league baseball pitchers to repair the elbow of the throwing arm. She recalled that after he had the surgery, his mother made a passing comment.

“She didn’t want him taking pain pills, because there was an issue in the past,” Carli Skaggs said. “It was pain killers.”

But she said thought little of it at the time, and never asked any questions about it, either to her husband or his mom.

Lachman displayed for the court a series of text messages between Tyler Skaggs and his mother, in which he asked for “1 more,” saying, “my knee is killing me.” In the texts, his mother, Debbie Hetman, tells him: “they r on my dresser. Have Carli get one.”

“Do you have any recollection of getting Tyler pain medication?” Lachman asked.

“No,” Carli Skaggs said.

Later in the day, Hetman took the stand, and recalled when Tyler Skaggs had come clean — first to his stepfather, then to Hetman — about the fact that he was addicted to Percocet, an opioid, in 2013.

Hetman and her husband made sure Tyler Skaggs began seeing a psychiatrist and a medical doctor. When asked how Tyler Skaggs looked at the time, Hetman said, “He looked like he had the flu. A mom can always see something in their child’s face. He just looked very sullen and lost.”

The doctor had prescribed Tyler Suboxone, but Tyler wanted to go cold turkey — that is, to withdraw without the help of medication. For the better part of year, Hetman said, she would monitor Tyler by making sure he took drug tests. And when he had Tommy John surgery and was prescribed pain killers, she monitored how many he was taking.

Much of Carli Skaggs’ direct testimony was devoted to telling the story of their romance — a remarkably wholesome one, in her telling. Both were from Santa Monica, and both attended the same elementary school, middle school and high school, though they didn’t know each other then, as Carli was four and a half years older than Tyler.

She was also more than a foot shorter. At one point, she said, she developed neck pain from craning her head up to kiss him.

She burst into tears when she recounted how, in the fall of 2013, he sat her down on her bed and asked if she would be his girlfriend.

“It was really sweet,” Carli said. “It’s a good memory.”

Weeks before his death, she said, they discussed having children.

“He talked about bringing his son into the clubhouse,” Carli said.

On road trips, when the two were separated, they would text constantly — which is why she said she was surprised when he didn’t text her back on the night of June 30.

“What you doin,” she asked over text message. “Hellloooo.”

When he didn’t respond, she texted, “U know better than to get drunk and fall asleep without texting me.”

“I figured he had some drinks on the plane, got to the hotel and passed out,” Carlie testified. “Tyler does not go to sleep without texting me goodnight.”

The next day, she recalled getting a phone call from then-Angels general manager Billy Eppler.

“He told me that Tyler was found unresponsive,” Carli told the court. “I don’t even know how to explain what I thought. I said ‘No, don’t tell me, don’t say it, don’t … I don’t even know if I heard him say the words, ‘he’s gone.’ But I knew.”

Hetman, too, shared about hearing the news of Tyler’s death.

“I heard it on the news before I heard it,” Hetman said. “Carli called me shortly after that. I was a mess. It was not a pretty sight. It was the worst day of my life. My husband held me while I was uncontrollably crying. I had just talked to Tyler on Sunday morning. I had just seen him pitch on Saturday. I was so mad. I was so angry that he was gone.”

During cross examination, Lachman tried to get Carli Skaggs to admit that she knew more about Tyler’s drug use than she was letting on.

Lachman asked: Hadn’t she texted him, during their honeymoon, if a certain invitee was along just to provide drugs? Hadn’t he once asked her, over text message, to “Grab one of Brad’s green pills,” referring to his personal trainer?

“He would recommend vitamins,” Carli Skaggs said. “I would assume that green pills was combination of vitamins.”

Lachman next tried to drive the point home that Tyler Skaggs was living dangerously.

“If you had learned he was drinking and crushing up pills and snorting them, would you have said, ‘what are you doing?’” Lachman asked.

“I don’t know,” Carli Skaggs said.

“Would you have been concerned?” Lachman asked, to which she replied to the affirmative.

“You would have said, ‘Hey, that’s super dangerous,” Lachman pressed, with Carli Skaggs replying, “Yeah. Possibly.”

“Because you know it is super dangerous to mix alcohol and prescription pain pills,” Lachman said.

“I know that now,” Carli said. She later added that back then, “I didn’t know anything about alcohol and those kinds of drugs.”

“Tyler concealed what he was doing?” Lachman asked.

“He didn’t share it with me,” Carli said.

Hetman will finish testifying on Tuesday morning, after which she’ll be cross examined by an Angels attorney. Also scheduled to testify on Tuesday is a former teammate of Tyler’s, a pitcher named Mike Morin. Evidence has been presented that Tyler Skaggs and Morin talked about drug use.

One text message presented as evidence from Tyler Skaggs to Morin read: “Haha I’m about to crush a blue right now,” adding, “Now that Carli isn’t here.”

The plaintiffs have told the court that they will rest their case at the end of the week. The Angels will begin calling witnesses after Thanksgiving. The trial is expected to end sometime in December.

The judge has been pressing both sides to cut witnesses, in the fear that the trial will run into the December holidays and lose the jury, resulting in a mistrial. That has meant that some names, like baseball player Andrew Heaney, have been stricken from the witness list.

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