Ex-Angels employee Eric Kay sentenced to 22 years in Tyler Skaggs case

Prosecutors played a tape of a prison phone conversation in which Kay, 48, said of Skaggs: “I hope people realize what a piece of s— he was. … Well, he’s dead, so f— him.”

Means said he that he had been dreading sentencing Kay, who was convicted of drug distribution resulting in death, because he felt mandatory minimums were “excessive.” But the judge said that the prison conversations showed a “refusal to accept responsibility and even be remorseful for something you caused.”

In his own remarks, Kay apologized for having “spewed vitriol” about Skaggs, prosecutors and the jury, in that and other prison correspondence.

“I wanted to blame Tyler for all of this,” Kay said, calling his words “so wrong and foul.”

The emotional sentencing hearing spelled a bleak end to this phase of a legal saga that began when Skaggs, 27, was found dead in a Southlake, Tex., hotel room July 1, 2019, with oxycodone and fentanyl in his system. Kay has indicated he will appeal his conviction.

Kay was, like Skaggs, a user of illicit opioids. During Kay’s trial in February, witnesses including several Major League Baseball players said he shared black market pain pills with them, though the government has not suggested that he did so for profit.

Federal prosecutor Erinn Martin stated that Kay was in Skaggs’ hotel room when he choked on his own vomit — a contention based on key card evidence — and that he 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 said Tuesday that Kay knew that the drugs he gave Skaggs were “likely or potentially counterfeit” and could contain fentanyl.

Kay, who did not take the stand in his own defense during the trial, did not directly address the government’s version of events on Tuesday but expressed remorse for his actions, blaming his addiction.

“I will spend the rest of my days in repair,” Kay said during remarks in which he sometimes sobbed.

Skaggs’s family members said Kay was responsible for the pitcher’s death in their own remarks in court Tuesday.

“Eric Kay knew that the drugs he was giving to my son and other players [were] laced with fentanyl,” said Skaggs’s mother, Debbie, adding that “a strict sentence … has the power to dissuade people from providing lethal drugs to others.”

“I feel strongly that those who risk the lives of others with killer drugs need to be held accountable,” Skaggs’s widow, Carli, said. “If anything good can come of Tyler’s death and this trial, it will be preventing someone else’s wife from receiving the call I did.”

“I know no matter how much time Eric Kay gets it won’t bring back Tyler,” Skaggs’ father Darrell said in a statement read in court by Tyler’s aunt. “But the…