Former Los Angeles Angels reliever Mike Morin testified Tuesday in the wrongful death lawsuit trial involving Tyler Skaggs, saying he would regularly receive help obtaining pain pills from former public relations executive Eric Kay to deal with pitching-related injuries.
Morin, who was drafted by the Angels in 2012 and made his major league debut in 2014, said that after a relief appearance of more than two innings he experienced a “weird, freak injury,” with a “weird vein sticking out of my shoulder.”
He said he tried pitching through it, but when it persisted he mentioned it to Skaggs, who introduced him to Kay, who is serving a 22-year federal prison term for supplying the fatal dose of fentanyl to Skaggs in July 2019.
Morin, who grew close to Skaggs due to their ages on a then-veteran team and their girlfriends being friendly, said he considered it a “temporary solution.” But popping pain pills became “part of the game,” he said.
“I didn’t love it. I didn’t want to be doing it,” he said.
But over time Kay had a “discreet” way of supplying the pain pills, he said. Morin would leave money in a cubby hole of his locker and later would find the pills there, he said.
He recounted standing in the Angels Stadium parking lot while his teammates were getting off the bus and retrieving their belongings, waiting with Kay for medication.
“I no longer feel this is appropriate,” he said of the awkward wait. “It’s way too long. I don’t like it. So I left.”
Morin acknowledged there were “times I snorted” the pills. He remembered, to some chuckles from the courtroom audience, “snorting Pixie sticks” while in high school.
“I don’t know why I thought that was appropriate,” he said.
In 2017, taking a pain pill was a “daily routine during my rehab process… No different than getting into the hot tub,” Morin said.
When asked if he ever told his wife or family about it, he grew emotional.
“I think it’s important for anyone to understand what it means to play at the major league level,” Morin said. “… There’s not a whole lot of relatable people who know what it takes to get there and stay there.”
Morin said he last saw Skaggs in 2019 when he was with the Minnesota Twins and they teamed up with other players to cheer up patients at a children’s hospital.
“I miss having somebody walk into a room and make it better,” he said of Skaggs. “I think anyone you talk to would say there was something about Tyler. People gravitated toward him. He had a way about him that was uplifting.”
The reliever said he hopes his testimony will lead to more reforms regarding the managing of medication on baseball teams.
The testimony comes as the attorneys in the case battle over what liability the team might have for Kay’s addictions versus how much Skaggs’ alleged substance abuse contributed to his death.
Skaggs’ mother, Debbie Hetman, finished testifying Tuesday morning as she was questioned by the defense regarding how much she knew of her son’s use of pain medication following Tommy John elbow surgery.
When asked if she was aware of a medical report that Skaggs had a 5-Percocet-a-day habit in 2013, his mother said she wasn’t aware how many he would take. Hetman said she did not know until Kay’s trial that Skaggs had a pain-pill dependency in 2012.
In 2013, he confessed to his parents he had a problem with an addiction to Percocet, she said. Hetman and his stepfather helped him set up appointments with a general practitioner and a psychiatrist.
“He looked like he had the flu,” she said Monday. “He was very thin… He looked very sullen and lost, crying out for help.”
Hetman said she knew nothing about opioids at the time so that is why they reached out to the physicians.
When Skaggs was prescribed Suboxone for his addiction, he said he would rather do it “cold turkey,” Hetman said. So she and her husband looked after him as he struggled with the withdrawal symptoms.
“We just surrounded him with love and support,” Hetman said.
Hetman insisted on him continuing drug testing through the next year.
When he had to get the elbow surgery, she said she told the team doctors about his Perocet addiction and she suggested extra-strength Tylenol, not knowing the more potent prescribed versions of it contained opioids.
But after the surgery he was “happy go-lucky” and “alert,” and “looked amazing,” she said. Hetman said she assumed her son discussed going cold turkey with his doctor, who prescribed the Suboxone.
Hetman insisted that she thought Skaggs only used the pain pills for pitching injuries and not recreationally. The decision to go cold turkey was also done in consultation with Skaggs’ psychiatrist, she said.
Hetman said she recalled specifically telling a doctor about her son’s Percocet problem and recommending he not take opioids as part of his rehabilitation from the elbow surgery when confronted by the defense that the doctor had no notes of that in the history of the patient.
“I made it perfectly clear he had an issue with Percocets and he could not be prescribed it,” Hetman said.
But then she was confronted with a record of the family picking up a prescription for medication containing Tylenol and oxycodone.
“I did not know that was Perocet,” Hetman said.
“It could be the doctor didn’t hear me or didn’t write it down,” she said of the lack of it in her son’s medical history.
“I assumed Tylenol 3 was just stronger than the over-the-counter Tylenol,” Hetman said.
Hetman denied that in her testimony in Kay’s trial, she did not want it to come out that Skaggs had a relapse. She also denied that they sidestepped rehabilitation so the addiction issue would not come out.
Hetman also skirmished with the defense about what she told investigators regarding Skaggs’ addiction issues after he died.
“I just came from the morgue seeing my son’s lifeless body and I don’t remember talking to anybody,” Hetman said. “It’s a constant nightmare to me.”
Hetman was also questioned about how helpful she and her family had been in assisting the Angels in tracking down her other son, who told investigators about Skaggs’ addiction to Percocet.
“He lives in a different state,” Hetman said. “I believe somewhere in Tennessee.”
Hetman added, “I gave them a cell phone number” for her other son. But the defense said it was out of service.
Hetman said she had “no problem” with her son testifying in the trial. She acknowledged she has not talked to him in six months.
Hetman was questioned about text messages with her other son telling him to stop talking about it. She said she was concerned about “anything impeding the investigation.”