{"id":658690,"date":"2026-04-02T12:14:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T12:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/658690\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T12:14:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T12:14:17","slug":"pirates-reveal-starting-pitcher-for-home-opener-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/658690\/","title":{"rendered":"Pirates Reveal Starting Pitcher for Home Opener"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>PITTSBURGH \u2014 The Pittsburgh Pirates finally make it back home from a road trip to start the 2026 campaign and will have their first series at PNC Park, with the starting pitchers known as well.<\/p>\n<p>Right-handed starting pitcher Mitch Keller will take the mound for the Pirates in their home opener vs. the Baltimore Orioles on April 3, with first pitch set for 4:12 p.m., in honor of the 412 area code for the Pittsburgh area.<\/p>\n<p>This marks the second straight season that Keller has served as the starting pitcher for the home opener as he did so last year vs. the New York Yankees on April 4, 2025.<\/p>\n<p>Keller struggled massively vs, the Yankees, giving up a season-high seven earned runs over 3.2 innings pitched in the 9-4 defeat. <\/p>\n<p>He makes this his second start of the season, as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/mlb\/pirates\/onsi\/news\/pittsburgh-pirates-win-first-game-season-avoiding-mets-sweep\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">dominated<\/a> in his first one, throwing six scoreless innings vs. the New York Mets on March 28, allowing just three hits and posting three strikeouts over 77 pitches. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH \u2014 The Pittsburgh Pirates finally make it back home from a road trip to start the 2026&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2402],"tags":[5,4,10,776,64,4297],"class_list":{"0":"post-658690","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-pirates","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-pirates","11":"tag-pittsburgh","12":"tag-pittsburgh-pirates","13":"tag-pittsburghpirates"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658690","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=658690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}