MLB: Ex-Angels Employee Sentenced to 22 years in death of Tyler Skaggs

Photo: ESPN

FORT WORTH, TEXAS — Eric Kay, former Los Angeles Angels communications director was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison on Tuesday after being convicted of providing drugs to pitcher Tyler Skaggs which led to his overdose death in Texas in 2019.

Kay, 48, believed the mandatory minimums were “excessive.” A mandatory minimum is a sentence created by Congress or a state legislature, which the court must give to a person convicted of a crime, no matter what the unique circumstances of the offender/offense are. Despite’s Kay beliefs, District Judge Terry Means stuck to the evidence and said that in Kay’s prison conversations he showed a “refusal to accept responsibility and even be remorseful for something you caused.”

Prosecutors played a tape of a prison phone conversation in which Kay, whose calls were monitored and recorded, said of Skaggs:

“I hope people realize what a piece of s--- he is. … Well, he’s dead, so f--- him,” said Kay.

The insensitive comments revealed Kay to be unremorseful. Skaggs, 27, was found dead in a hotel located in Southlake, Texas, on July 1, 2019, with oxycodone and fentanyl in his system. Kay was a user of illicit opioids, and witnesses, including several Major League Baseball players, revealed he shared black-market pain pills with them. According to the government, he did not sell the pills for profit.

Erinn Martin, a federal prosecutor, stated that Kay was in Skaggs’s hotel room when he choked on his own vomit. Evidence was based on a key card which revealed Kay was present during Skaggs’s overdose. Martin suggested that Kay didn’t try to save the pitcher either because “he freaked out and decided to save himself and his job,” or because he was incapacitated himself. Martin also stated that Kay knew that the drugs he gave Skaggs were “likely or potentially counterfeit” and could contain fentanyl.

Three years after Skaggs’s death, the jury found Kay guilty.

Kay has indicated he will appeal his conviction.