The Pirates Opening Day loss was 11-5 and if you watched that first inning, you already know the season is going to require a lot of patience. We were told this was a different team. We were told the pitching was the foundation that would carry them. What we actually watched was Paul Skenes get yanked before he could record three outs while Oneil Cruz played center field like he’d never seen a fly ball before in his life.
I’m not overreacting. I watched the same game you did.
The Pirates’ Opening Day Loss Started With Oneil Cruz Forgetting How Baseball Works
Brandon Lowe went to Citi Field and hit a two-run homer in the first at-bat of his Pirates career. Pittsburgh up 2-0, Skenes on the mound, sunny afternoon in New York. For about four minutes, everything was fine.
Then Cruz stepped into the picture and ruined it twice in the same inning.
Brett Baty hit a line drive to center with the bases loaded. Cruz broke in on it, the ball sailed over his head, and three runs scored on a bases-clearing triple. On the very next at-bat, Cruz lost a Marcus Semien pop fly in the sun and just stood there while it dropped and another run scored. Two batters. Four runs. Inning still going.
Neither play got charged as an error, so all five of the runs Skenes allowed are sitting on his stat line. His ERA on Opening Day 2026 is 67.50. That is a real number that actually happened.
I know Cruz has been working on his defense. I know he’s a converted shortstop who is still learning center field. I know all of that. He led all center fielders with 11 errors last year and the plan was for him to improve. On the first day of the season, in the first inning of the first game, he made two of the most basic outfield mistakes you can make and handed the Mets a lead they never gave back.
Skenes Wasn’t Sharp Either and That’s the Part That Should Concern You
I’m not going to put everything on Cruz, because Skenes didn’t have his best stuff either. He walked Francisco Lindor after going 3-0 on him. He walked Luis Robert Jr. on ten pitches after Robert fouled off several in a row just to stay alive. He hit Francisco Alvarez with a pitch to end his day. He threw 37 pitches and recorded two outs.
For context, Skenes allowed five earned runs in a single start exactly one time in all of 2025. The Mets scored five before the first inning was over in 2026. He came in off a dominant World Baseball Classic, a unanimous Cy Young, and a 1.96 career ERA. Opening Day was the worst start of his career by a wide margin.
Maybe it’s rust. Maybe the Mets lineup is legitimately good and they jumped on him early. Maybe both. But the Pirates needed Skenes to be Skenes today and he wasn’t, and the combination of that and Cruz’s defense made the first inning a complete disaster.
The Pirates Opening Day Loss Exposed the Real Problem With This Team
Here’s what bothers me more than the box score. All offseason we heard about how this Pirates team was built differently. The pitching was elite. The bats were the question mark and they added Lowe to help answer it. Lowe hit two home runs today. Ryan O’Hearn hit one. The offense gave them a lead and kept putting up runs even after the game was out of hand.
The pitching was the catastrophe. That is the opposite of what we were promised.
And because Skenes was done after 37 pitches, the bullpen spent the whole afternoon trying to keep the score from getting more embarrassing than it already was. The Mets put up six more runs in the later innings anyway. When you go to your bullpen in the first inning of Game 1 of a series, you are already behind the eight ball for the next three days.
I’ve had probably 50 people tell me today that I have no idea what I’m talking about and it’s only one game. Maybe. But when you’ve watched this organization for as long as I have, you know what a bad sign looks like. This felt familiar in the worst possible way.
Mitch Keller on Friday Has to Be Different or This Series Gets Ugly
Mitch Keller takes the mound Friday and he needs to go deep. Not because it would be nice. Because the bullpen is already taxed from Game 1 and the Mets lineup did not look like a group that was going to cool off on its own.
This Mets offense has Juan Soto, Francisco Lindor, Bo Bichette, and Jorge Polanco. They spent a lot of money this offseason and today looked like a team that knew it. If Keller gives them four innings and hands it back to a tired bullpen, this series turns into a statement about exactly who the Pirates are and who the Mets are. And it will not be a fun statement for us.
I don’t think the season is over. I do think the Pirates owe us a better answer on Friday than what we got today. And if this turns into a sweep, every single person who told me to calm down is going to have to answer for that.
I’ll be right here.
