Tyler Wayne Skaggs was an American left-handed professional baseball starting pitcher who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Los Angeles Angels from 2012 until his death in 2019.
A native of Woodland Hills, California, and a graduate of Santa Monica High School, Skaggs was a supplemental first-round selection for the Angels in the 2009 Major League Baseball draft. He was traded to the Diamondbacks the following year as part of an exchange for pitcher Dan Haren and rose through Arizona’s farm system.
Despite his initial plans to begin pitching in the minor leagues by the end of the 2015 season, Skaggs did not start practising again until the beginning of the 2016 season and returned to Angel’s mound that July.
Although he figured prominently in the Angels’ rotation between 2017 and 2019, Skaggs continued to miss large parts of each season because of injury. Through June 2019, he posted a career earned run average (ERA) of 4.41, recorded 476 strikeouts, and had a win-loss record of 28–38.
Tyler Skaggs Cause of Death
Skaggs was found unresponsive in his hotel room in Southlake, Texas. He was pronounced dead at around 2:18 pm when authorities arrived at the scene. Investigators discovered a number of pills in Skaggs’s hotel room, including a 30-mg oxycodone pill, additional 5 mg oxycodone pills, several anti-inflammatories, and white powder on the floor.
On August 30 the Medical Examiner announced that the autopsy had uncovered a mix of fentanyl, oxycodone, and alcohol in Skaggs’s system and that he had a blood alcohol level of 0.12. The examination concluded that Skaggs had died of asphyxia after aspirating his own vomit, and his death was ruled an accident.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) later determined that fentanyl, a synthetic opioid thirty to fifty times more potent than heroin, was the primary contributor to Skaggs’s death and that he likely would have survived if not for the substance.