Former Angels Employee Convicted of Distributing Drugs That Caused MLB Pitcher Tyler Skaggs’Death

After less than 90 minutes of deliberations Thursday, a Texas federal jury found former Los Angeles Angels communications director Eric Kay guilty of two felony drug charges in connection with the 2019 overdose death of pitcher Tyler Skaggs.

Kay, 47, faces a minimum of 20 years in federal prison when he’s scheduled to be sentenced on June 28, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Texas, which prosecuted the case.

During the nearly two-week trial in U.S. District Court in Fort Worth, the government called numerous former Angels players to the witness stand, including ex-New York Mets pitcher Matt Harvey, who played with Skaggs on the Angels in 2019. Harvey and four other former Angels players testified that they received “blue 30 milligram oxycodone pills” from Kay, according to prosecutors. 

“(The players) further testified that (Kay) was the only source of these pills and would conduct transactions in the Angels (sic) Stadium,” the U.S. Attorney’s press release said. The players’ testimony provided a disturbing look inside the major league clubhouse culture, and at one point Harvey testified that Skaggs told him he crushed and snorted oxycodone on a toilet paper dispenser in the clubhouse bathroom, according to ESPN.

Kay did not testify at his trial.

Skaggs was found dead in a Texas hotel room on July 1, 2019 when the Angels were in town to play a series against the Rangers. The left-hander was 27 at the time of his death. A Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s office later determined Skaggs died with a mixture of ethanol, fentanyl, and oxycodone in his system, according to the U.S. Attorney’s press release.

Federal prosecutors charged Kay in August, 2020, and then U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, Erin Nealy Cox, said during a press conference: “This is the tragic story of Tyler Skaggs, who last year became one of our nation’s thousands of fentanyl-related overdose fatalities.” Nealy Cox also said fentanyl is “50 to 100 times more potent than morphine.”

Kay denied he knew Skaggs was a drug user in his initial interview with law enforcement, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said, and Kay claimed he’d last seen Skaggs during check-in at the Texas hotel on June 30, 2019. But text messages on Skaggs’ phone revealed otherwise, according to prosecutors. During the course of the investigation into Skaggs’ death, authorities also learned that Kay had told a colleague he had visited Skaggs’ hotel room the night of the pitcher’s death, the U.S. Attorney’s press release said.

Kay’s attorneys did not respond to email requests on whether they will file an appeal. After the guilty verdict, Kay defense attorney Reagan Wynn told reporters outside the courthouse that Kay’s legal team was “obviously disappointed in the verdict.”

“This is a tragedy all the way around,” said Wynn. “Eric Kay is getting ready to do minimum 20 years in a federal penitentiary and it goes up from there. And Tyler Skaggs is gone. There’s no winners in any of this.”

According to former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani, Kay’s best option now may be to cooperate with federal prosecutors post-conviction, that is, if the government files a 5K motion, which opens the door for a possible sentence reduction.

“You’re looking at so much time for these federal drug convictions, that the only way to get out is start naming names,” said Rahmani, now the president of West Coast Trial Lawyers. “That’s how drug cases work. If you’re a narcotics prosecutor, you want to get to the head of the organization. You care about Kay, but you really want to get to the folks that are producing the drugs. The heads of these (cartels) are nowhere near the drugs. They place a call, the product moves. You get someone like Kay and then work your way up the organization.”

Skaggs’ family members — his parents and widow, Carli — already filed wrongful death lawsuits in Texas and California, respectively, last year against the Angels organization, Kay, and another former Angels communications executive, Tim Mead. Those suits accuse the defendants of negligence. Mead was briefly the president of the Baseball Hall of Fame before resigning from the post last year.

“This case is a sobering reminder: Fentanyl kills. Anyone who deals fentanyl — whether on the streets or out of a world-famous baseball stadium — puts his or her buyers at risk,” said Acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, Chad Meacham. “No one is immune from this deadly drug. A beloved pitcher, Tyler Skaggs, was struck down in the midst of an ascendant career. The Justice Department is proud to hold his dealer accountable for his family and friends’ unimaginable loss.” 

Rahmani said in the fallout of the guilty verdict, and after what was revealed during testimony about a Major League Baseball team’s darker clubhouse culture, federal prosecutors may want to further examine whether the opioid crisis is a pervasive problem throughout America’s pastime.

“This is a black eye for baseball,” said Rahmani. “Fentanyl is such a huge issue now, and prosecutors are being much more aggressive. This is an epidemic in this country. Thousands are dying. Fentanyl prosecutions are a big priority for the Department of Justice. When there is public pressure, that’s when prosecutors act.”