{"id":178719,"date":"2026-03-29T08:41:38","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T08:41:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/178719\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T08:41:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T08:41:38","slug":"new-look-mets-knock-out-skenes-in-1st-inning-and-sink-pirates-11-7-in-season-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/178719\/","title":{"rendered":"New-look Mets knock out Skenes in 1st inning and sink Pirates 11-7 in season opener"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Brett Baty laced a bases-loaded triple and the New York Mets chased Paul Skenes in the first inning<\/a> of his worst major league start, beating the Pittsburgh Pirates 11-7 on Thursday in their season opener at Citi Field.<\/a><\/p>\n

Carson Benge<\/a> homered in his first career game, going back-to-back with Francisco Alvarez at the bottom of a new-look lineup, and Freddy Peralta<\/a> (1-0) won his Mets debut as New York improved to 42-23 on opening day before a sellout crowd of 41,449.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the best record of any big league team \u2014 even though the Mets lost their first eight openers from 1962-69.<\/p>\n

Brandon Lowe<\/a> homered twice and fellow Pirates newcomer Ryan O\u2019Hearn<\/a> also went deep, but Pittsburgh\u2019s pitching and defense were dreadful in a disappointing start.<\/p>\n

Center fielder Oneil Cruz botched consecutive plays in the first inning, helping the Mets score five runs off a surprisingly ineffective Skenes (0-1), matching his career high. Last year\u2019s NL Cy Young Award winner<\/a> was removed after getting only two outs on 37 pitches in the shortest of his 56 big league starts.<\/p>\n

With five new hitters in the order, the Mets ran deep counts early and drew eight walks while batting around twice in the first five innings. <\/p>\n

Leadoff man Francisco Lindor<\/a> took a trio of free passes and scored each time. Luis Robert Jr. had two RBI singles in his Mets debut. Benge and Alvarez launched solo homers<\/a> off reliever Justin Lawrence to make it 11-5 in the sixth.<\/p>\n

Pirates pitchers walked nine overall, surpassing last season\u2019s high. <\/p>\n

Peralta, a two-time All-Star acquired from Milwaukee in January,<\/a> struck out seven and walked none over five innings in his third straight opening-day start \u2014 all in New York City.<\/p>\n

Tobias Myers, obtained from the Brewers in the same trade, followed with three innings of one-run ball.<\/p>\n

Pittsburgh opened on the road for the 10th consecutive year in the earliest start to a season for both teams.<\/p>\n

Up next<\/p>\n

Following a day off, Pirates RHP Mitch Keller (6-15, 4.19 ERA) starts the middle game of the series Saturday against LHP David Peterson (9-6, 4.22).<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/MLB<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Brett Baty laced a bases-loaded triple and the New York Mets chased Paul Skenes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[993,71737,35578,6595,35576,61278,30159,34723,72255,48326,72045,20,48354,1066,9,24,11,320,10,60102,6657,20052,3909,19217,60096,319,72254],"class_list":["post-178719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-baseball","tag-brandon-lowe","tag-brett-baty","tag-carson-benge","tag-david-peterson","tag-francisco-alvarez","tag-francisco-lindor","tag-freddy-peralta","tag-justin-lawrence","tag-luis-robert","tag-mitch-keller","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-baseball","tag-new-jersey","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-mets","tag-new-york-news","tag-oneil-cruz","tag-pa-state-wire","tag-paul-skenes","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-ryan-ohearn","tag-sports","tag-tobias-myers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}