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Los Angeles Angels: Tyler Skaggs’s death has gone to a Texas grand jury

By Jeff Kallman

ANAHEIM, CA - JULY 12: Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim players lay their jerseys on the pitchers mound after they won a combined no-hitter against the Seattle Mariners at Angel Stadium of Anaheim on July 12, 2019 in Anaheim, California. The entire Angels team wore Tyler Skaggs #45 jersey to honor him after his death on July 1. Angels won 13-0. Los Angeles Angels public relations employee Eric Kay is seen on left. (Photo by John McCoy/Getty Images)
ANAHEIM, CA - JULY 12: Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim players lay their jerseys on the pitchers mound after they won a combined no-hitter against the Seattle Mariners at Angel Stadium of Anaheim on July 12, 2019 in Anaheim, California. The entire Angels team wore Tyler Skaggs #45 jersey to honor him after his death on July 1. Angels won 13-0. Los Angeles Angels public relations employee Eric Kay is seen on left. (Photo by John McCoy/Getty Images) /
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(Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)
(Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images) /

Tyler Skaggs’s death in Texas last July shocked the Angels and all of MLB. A grand jury probe is likely to turn up more disturbing facts.

Tyler Skaggs‘s death last July rocked baseball whole and his Los Angeles Angels in particular. Now the overdose death of the 27-year-old lefthander in a Texas hotel turned toward possible criminal charges. A Texas grand jury has convened to hear evidence, particularly about whether Angels officials knew Skaggs had an opioid addiction.

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If wrongdoing among team officials is discovered with or without an actual criminal conviction, the Los Angeles Times says, Skaggs’s family could still use the information in a civil lawsuit worth millions against anyone found to have any responsibility in his death.

The Times‘s Bill Shaikin also says no Angels players were called to talk to the grand jury as of Monday, and nobody knows just yet what the grand jury has received from prosecutors in the case. But Angels pitcher Andrew Heaney told the Times over the weekend that Skaggs’s teammates didn’t believe he had a drug problem.

“If anybody felt like he had a problem, and it was obvious, we would have said something,” Heaney told the Times. “I don’t think he did. I still believe that, to this day. Trust me, I’ve thought about it a million times.”

Heaney and several of his teammates don’t like the implications that Tyler Skaggs was nothing more than an opioid addict, implications that began when the toxicology report on his death was released near the end of last August. Neither did Skaggs’s family when they hired a Texas attorney at the same time to help them determine for dead last certain how he died.

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