Michael RothsteinNov 17, 2025, 10:11 PM ET
- Michael Rothstein, based in Atlanta, is a reporter on ESPN’s investigative and enterprise team. You can follow him via Twitter @MikeRothstein.
SANTA ANA, Calif. — Debbie Hetman, the mother of deceased Los Angeles Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs and one of the plaintiffs in the family’s wrongful death civil lawsuit against the franchise, testified Monday that she didn’t know whether her son ever informed the team about his drug addiction, but that the organization never asked her any questions about him.
If the team had asked, Hetman said, she would have told the Angels he became addicted to Percocet after the 2013 season. She said her son came to her and asked for help. The Angels traded for Skaggs before the 2014 season.
The Angels have long said they were not aware of Skaggs’ drug problems, one of the key arguments the defense has been building in the trial that entered its sixth week Monday. The Angels contend they are not responsible for Skaggs’ death, and it was his reckless decisions in mixing alcohol and opioids that led to his death from an accidental fentanyl overdose in a Texas hotel room in 2019.
Monday saw the two main plaintiffs in the case — Hetman and Skaggs’ widow, Carli Skaggs — take the stand in emotional testimony.
Hetman explained how Skaggs came to her and Skaggs’ stepfather following the 2013 season, when Skaggs pitched in the Arizona Diamondbacks organization, and told them he was addicted to Percocet. They worked with Skaggs to see doctors and a psychiatrist with experience in addiction.
She described her son taking drug tests — part of his medical plan and insisted upon by his mother — as late as the following summer to make sure he was staying clean. By then, he had been traded to the Angels. Hetman believed her son was OK following the 2013 admission because he looked more like himself than the “very sullen and lost” person she saw after the 2013 season.
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“As a parent, you want to make sure your child is on the right track,” Hetman testified. “And getting healthy and not falling back into the same pattern of use.”
Hetman said she spoke with Dr. Neal ElAttrache, who performed Skaggs’ Tommy John surgery in 2014, about her son’s Percocet issue and that she wanted them to prescribe different painkillers for him. She also told Skaggs’ agents and had an in-passing conversation with his then-girlfriend, Carli, about it.
Carli Skaggs testified Monday that she didn’t inquire further with the family or her future husband. Carli Skaggs, the lead plaintiff in the case, denied knowing her husband had a drug problem or took illicit pills prior to his 2019 death. The only drugs she knew him to take were marijuana and ecstasy once on their honeymoon, she said.
As part of an uncomfortable cross-examination, the defense attorney asked Carli Skaggs if she felt her husband needed help for drug rehab. She said no. Carli Skaggs also testified her belief it was out of character for Skaggs to ask former communications employee Eric Kay for drugs after Kay left rehab in 2019.
Kay was convicted in federal court in 2022 of giving Skaggs the pill that killed him and is serving 22 years in prison. Multiple players testified during the criminal trial Kay provided them with pills.
Carli Skaggs gave tearful testimony about her relationship with Skaggs, how she found out he died and the six years since. Angels general manager Billy Eppler called to deliver the news.
“I don’t even know that I heard him say the words ‘he was gone,’ but that’s what I knew,” Carli Skaggs said. “And then I immediately called Debbie.”
She described the call as “the worst phone call I ever made.” The family went to Texas and Carli Skaggs described seeing her husband in the coroner’s office.
“I didn’t want to see him but I had to because I needed to know that it was real, that he was really gone,” Carli Skaggs said. “As painful as it was, I needed that. It was in this cold, white room and the love of my life, my best friend, he’s just lying there on a gurney lifeless, and I had just spoken to him the day before.”
She said she wanted to give him one last kiss “even though I was scared to.”
Six years later, she said, she still asks herself “is this real?” She described difficulties entering new relationships and seeing friends with children because it’s “a reminder of what I don’t have.”
In the final days before her father died last year, she said, Carli Skaggs held his hand while listening to deposition testimony on headphones about her husband’s death.
The trial, she said, has “consumed my life.”
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