{"id":648307,"date":"2026-03-28T08:41:21","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T08:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/648307\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T08:41:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T08:41:21","slug":"mets-offense-puts-on-a-show-on-opening-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/648307\/","title":{"rendered":"Mets’ Offense Puts On a Show on Opening Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an Opening Day showdown against the Pittsburgh Pirates that seemed destined to become a pitcher\u2019s duel between Freddy Peralta<\/a> and Paul Skenes<\/a>, the New York Mets made it a quick day at the office for the reigning NL Cy Young Award winner.<\/p>\n

After Peralta gave up two earned runs in the top of the first inning on a Brandon Lowe<\/a> home run, New York came up to bat in the bottom half of the frame just looking to battle against Skenes and hopefully push a few runners across the plate over the course of his outing. What transpired, however, was a surprise to just about everyone.<\/p>\n

Francisco Lindor<\/a> opened the Mets\u2019 offensive festivities with a walk before Juan Soto<\/a> dumped a single into right center, allowing the former to go from first to third. In his first plate appearance for New York, Bo Bichette<\/a> plated Lindor with a sacrifice fly down the right field line to make it 2-1.<\/p>\n

The Mets got plenty of help from Pirates center fielder Oneil Cruz<\/a> from that point forward, as he let a Brett Baty<\/a> line drive carry over his head, thus emptying the bases and providing New York with a 4-2 lead. Then, on a routine fly ball off the bat of Marcus Semien<\/a>, Cruz appeared to lose the ball in the sun and allowed it to drop, scoring Baty and making it 5-2.<\/p>\n

Skenes was pulled at 37 pitches after recording just two outs, marking the shortest start of his career up to this point, and the Mets didn\u2019t stop from there.<\/p>\n

Luis Robert Jr.<\/a> got in on the action with an RBI single in the fourth inning, and New York put up a three-spot to grow its lead to 9-4 in the fifth.<\/p>\n

Carson Benge<\/a>, in his big-league debut, and Francisco Alvarez<\/a> went back-to-back with solo shots in the sixth inning, which served as the final touches on the Mets\u2019 11-7 victory at Citi Field.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Photo By: Roberto Carlo<\/p>\n

Lindor and Bichette were the only players to finish without a hit for New York, but the former still reached base three times while the latter had his aforementioned sac fly. The club as a whole worked strong at-bats throughout the entire contest, drawing a total of nine walks and forcing Pittsburgh to throw 192 pitches.<\/p>\n

Alvarez in particular had a promising showing even outside of his second-deck blast to left field, recording three batted balls of at least 95 mph, which he did on just four occasions in 2025, per MMO\u2019s Mike Mayer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mayer also noted<\/a> that Opening Day represented the ninth time over the last decade that New York walked nine times and had 11 hits in a single game, a feat the team didn\u2019t accomplish in 2025.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to imagine a more encouraging start to the season for the Mets at the plate with their new-look lineup, and they\u2019ll look to sustain that momentum over a larger sample size moving forward.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In an Opening Day showdown against the Pittsburgh Pirates that seemed destined to become a pitcher\u2019s duel between…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2396],"tags":[5,5805,227,134,101,4,1690,61,2548,4203],"class_list":{"0":"post-648307","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-mets","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-carson-benge","10":"tag-francisco-lindor","11":"tag-juan-soto","12":"tag-mets","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-mets","16":"tag-newyork","17":"tag-newyorkmets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116305914459986033","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}