TEMPE, Ariz. — Most organizations begin spring with hope and a clean slate. The Los Angeles Angels are different. Annually, it seems, they gather behind the boulder that crashed down on them the previous season and, grunting and straining, regroup and begin attempting to shove it back up the mountain.
This spring’s Angels, though, aren’t another rendition of “Let’s See if We Can Get Mike Trout to the Playoffs.” Instead, this is a bruised and battered organization emerging from a devastating winter.
In February, less than two years after the horrific death of Tyler Skaggs, the team’s former communications director Eric Kay was convicted in a Texas courtroom of distributing a fentanyl-laced opioid to Skaggs that resulted in the pitcher’s death.