Top Los Angeles Angels executives testified on Friday, Dec. 12 that they knew nothing about Tyler Skaggs’ opioid use or that a team communication staffer was providing Skaggs with illicit pills prior to the pitchers’ shocking 2019 death, as testimony in the high-profile wrongful death trial against the organization drew to a close.
Molly Jolly, the team’s senior vice president of finance and administration, said she was “flabbergasted” to learn of the drug use involving an Angels employee and Skaggs. Jolly said that had she known about the drug use, she would have reported it to Major League Baseball.
“We would have taken action,” Jolly said. “We would have wanted them to get clean and sober.”
Jolly noted that the Angels have provided more than a million pages of documents and responded to more than 70 subpoenas of phone records for team employees. None of those records referred to Skaggs and drugs, she testified under questioning by a team attorney.
Testifying briefly at the end of the day, Angels President John Carpino also denied knowing of drug use by Skaggs or Kay, and said the team was never criminally implicated in Skaggs’ death.
“Knowing what we know now, I wish we would have heard,” Carpino testified. “I wish someone would have said something to me. We would have gotten him (Skaggs) the help he needed. He may have potentially been alive today.”
“He was a part of our family,” he added.
Attorneys for the Los Angeles Angels, following Jolly and Carpino’s testimony, rested their case late Friday afternoon, bringing to a close two months of testimony encompassing more than 40 witnesses.
Skaggs died in a Texas hotel room in 2019 at the start of a team road trip. The 27-year-old pitcher had snorted the contents of a counterfeit pill containing fentanyl provided to him by Angel communication staffer Eric Kay and had consumed oxycodone and alcohol.
Attorneys for the Angels argued that Skaggs hid his opioid addiction, preventing them from getting him help. Skaggs’ family, along with his agent, testified to not being aware of Skaggs’ opioid issues during his time with the Angels.
Several former teammates of Skaggs testified that he introduced him to opioids and informed them that Kay, the Angels communications staffer, could obtain the pills. Kay got the illicit pills from dealers he met online.
How much Skaggs could have earned in his career if not for his untimely death was among many contentious issues during the trial.
Had he lived, Skaggs would have likely earned a little more than $32 million through 2026, when he would have been 34-years-old, said Stephen Walters, a former economic advisor on Major League Baseball player valuations who worked for the Boston Red Sox, the Chicago Cubs and the Baltimore Orioles and who testified on behalf of the Angels on Friday.
The baseball earnings estimate provided by the defense expert was far lower than the estimate presented during the plaintiff’s case. An expert testifying on behalf of the Skaggs’ family previously testified that Skaggs would have likely earned between $102 million and $114 million between 2021 and 2026. The plaintiff experts had painted Skaggs’ career as being on the upswing.
But Dan Duquette, a veteran Major League Baseball executive who testified Friday on behalf of the Angels, noted that the spin rate of Skaggs’ curveball — his signature pitch — had steadily dropped between 2016 and 2019. A faster spinning curveball “breaks” quicker and has more of a downward break, Duquette explained, making it harder to hit.
“It is still a very good pitch,” Duquette said of Skaggs’ curveball. “But it is trending downward.”
The velocity of Skaggs’ fastball had also dropped between 2016 and 2019, Duquette explained, which gave hitters more time to make a decision and potentially put the ball into play, and put more pressure on Skaggs’ off-speed pitches.
Duquette, who described routinely making decisions about the value of professional players while working as a general manager for the Montreal Expos, Boston Red Sox and Baltimore Orioles, said Skaggs also spent significant time injured on the disabled list.
“It speaks to his unreliability and availability to the team,” Duquette said, adding that Skaggs would have become a free agent in the midst of the COVID pandemic, when the amount of money teams had available to sign players was limited.
Attorneys for the Skaggs family noted that the team experts when determining Skaggs’ potential contract value had compared him to pitchers who played in the 1960s, and to some players who pitched relief out of the bullpen, rather than being a starting pitcher like Skaggs.
Those who worked with Kay in the Angels’ communications office said they didn’t learn about Kay’s own opioid issues or his drug ties to Skaggs and the other players until after Skaggs’ death. But several former players and clubhouse workers testified that Kay’s drug use was well known in the organization, and Kay’s ex-wife alleged that the Angels were warned that Kay was providing opioid pills to Skaggs prior to his death.
Closing arguments in the civil trial are expected to take place on Monday morning in an Orange County Superior Courtroom in Santa Ana. It will be the last chance for attorneys to argue whether the Angels bear any responsibility for Skaggs’ death. If jurors decide the team knew or at least should have known that Kay was providing illicit opioid pills to Skaggs, it could open the door to potentially hundreds of millions in financial damages.