Skaggs’ Former Teammate Reveals Drug Secret and Blames Player

Witness Reveals Details in the Skaggs Case

In the trial for the death of pitcher Tyler Skaggs, a former Los Angeles Angels teammate, Mike Morin, offered key testimony that sheds light on drug use within the team. Morin stated that both he, Skaggs, and team employee Eric Kay, who provided them with the pills, kept their consumption of illicit substances secret. Morin stated that during the 2017 season, he believed that only he, Skaggs, and Kay knew the details of the drugs. Morin testified that he did not share this information with his wife or family, and that he was aware of the illegality of his actions. He also revealed how he believed Skaggs felt about it. “I don’t think he wanted a lot of people to know what he was doing,” Morin said. Faced with the question of whether Skaggs was responsible for his decisions that led to his death, Morin answered in the affirmative after a pause. This statement supports the Angels’ position, who argue that Skaggs’ reckless decisions caused his accidental overdose death in 2019. The team has maintained that they are not responsible for Skaggs’ death and were unaware of his drug problems. The Skaggs family’s lawyers allege that the Angels put Skaggs in danger by failing to take action despite knowing about Kay’s drug use and continuing to employ him. Morin recounted how Skaggs connected him with Kay in 2017, and that before that, he would not have imagined that Kay would provide pills to the players. Kay was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2022 for supplying Skaggs with the fatal pill of oxycodone mixed with fentanyl. Morin testified that Kay provided him and Skaggs with blue 30-milligram oxycodone pills, known as “blue boys.” He described how they sometimes crushed a pill and snorted it in the club’s bathroom, and that the distribution of pills was generally “extremely discreet.” Morin explained that he left money in his locker and Kay would collect the money and leave the pills in the same place. During the 2017 season, he received pills from Kay between five and eight times. Morin stated that he never questioned how Kay obtained the pills, assuming they were pharmacy medications.

“I was completely unaware, in a very naive way, that a prescribed pill could be contaminated,” Morin said. “So I assumed that any pill we were going to get wouldn’t be fatal.”

Mike Morin

Morin also talked about the pressures professional players feel to stay in the Major Leagues and the difficulty of others understanding “the immense ups and downs” that it entails. Morin’s testimony came a day after Skaggs’ mother, Debbie Hetman, testified that she had not informed anyone in the Angels about her son’s Percocet addiction in 2013. The trial continues with expert testimonies that will explain how much Skaggs could have earned in the rest of his career.