Sam Blum of The Athletic had an article published this morning that alleges that Cincinnati Reds starting pitcher Wade Miley was one of the people who was supplying Tyler Skaggs with drugs during his career. Skaggs passed away of an overdose on July 1, 2019 when he was an active player with the Los Angeles Angels.
The report from Blum is based on accidentally publicly posted court filings in an ongoing civil lawsuit against the Angels by the Skaggs family. Within those documents were depositions from CAA’s co-lead of the baseball division Ryan Hamill and a recorded phone call from prison from Eric Kay (the Angels former director of communications who is in prison on two charges related to the death of Skaggs) – both of which implicated Wade Miley as someone who was providing percocets to Skaggs. Hamill noted that Skaggs told him that he was getting them from Miley in 2013. Skaggs and Miley were teammates with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2012 and 2013 when Skaggs was 20 and 21-years-old and Miley was 25 and 26-years-old. Following the 2013 season the Diamondbacks traded Skaggs to the Angels.
Wade Miley declined a comment through his agent for the story. With the Reds having a day off today, reporters have not had the opportunity to ask him about it in person. It’s highly unlikely that anyone will get a comment, and at best will likely be a “we can’t comment on something with a lawsuit still going on” kind of statement. Again worth noting that this all came up in a civil lawsuit and that Miley has not been charged with any crimes and it doesn’t appear he’s been investigated for any.
Perhaps the bigger question is how the Reds will respond. When the Aroldis Chapman situation went down, the team rushed to get rid of him. But they also are the same team that was fine with bringing in Alfredo Simon despite his on-going court case. The difference between those two situations is that they were happening at the time, where as Miley’s situation seems to have happened over a decade ago and we’re just now finding out about it.
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