New-look Mets lineup embodied David Stearns' vision in dominant Opening Day performance

If Opening Day were a prophecy, instead of merely a beginning, the Mets should start planning for a late October destiny.

If they can replicate for a whole season what they did Thursday afternoon — when they were a patient, pitch-eating juggernaut that pushed reigning Cy Young winner Paul Skenes from the game before he could record a third out — they can rewrite history. Suddenly, that 2025 debacle could look more like a painful-but-necessary learning experience, one that nudged David Stearns to remake his lineup into the relentless, dynamic force last year’s team never found a way to be.

Because for one sunny afternoon in Flushing, everything went perfectly for a new-look Mets lineup that included five players who did not appear for them in 2025. By taking close pitches and fouling off uncomfortable strikes, they picked apart one of the best pitchers of this generation so completely that he left the game before finishing one inning, by far the worst start of his career.

“Look, that first inning was pretty impressive,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “Not gonna lie.”

That first inning was a masterclass in all the things the Mets could not do last year – creating sparks, then igniting them into a full-fledged flame.

Francisco Lindor worked a walk. Juan Soto blooped a hit into short center, at which point Lindor hustled to third base, challenging Oneil Cruz’s cannon in center to take an extra base.

That brought up Bo Bichette, the former American League batting champion, heralded as a runners-in-scoring-position savant the Mets sorely needed. He fell into a two-strike count. He fouled off a pitch up and in. Then he muscled a fly ball just deep enough to right field to score a run, giving the Mets a walk, a bloop, a sprint, and a chip shot. Something out of nothing.

Jorge Polanco, another new addition, singled. Then, Luis Robert Jr. – known as an avid chaser of strikes and balls, alike – worked a walk in just the second 10-pitch plate appearance he has had in the last three years. A batter later, Brett Baty delivered a go-ahead triple. He said seeing so many Skenes offerings to Robert helped.

“That’s what we harp on. We’re a complete lineup,” Baty said. “And if you wear the pitcher down, somebody is going to get a mistake and do some damage with it.”

Now, of course, any team can have a good inning on any given day. And many teams can even have that good inning against Skenes, though it must be said the Mets were helped by two misreads by Cruz that turned Baty’s ball from a sacrifice fly to a triple and Marcus Semien’s bloop into a double a batter later.

But what was encouraging for Mendoza, he said later, was that the Mets put together a similar inning in the fifth inning. Carson Benge reached base for the first time in his career with a walk. Francisco Alvarez singled. Lindor walked for the third time in five innings to load the bases. At that point, Soto poked a ten-hopper through the left side, the kind of hit that can materialize when hitters put the ball in play with runners in scoring position instead of prioritizing big swings and damage.

A batter later, Bichette worked a 13-pitch at-bat that ended in a strikeout.

“I wrote that down,” Mendoza said later. “Even though he struck out, then we see a four-pitch walk right away, right behind him. He’s going to make him work. We’ve got a lot of guys who are going to grind at-bats. Even if we didn’t get the exact result we wanted in that particular situation, the other guy benefitted from it.”

Ironically, Bichette was the only player in the lineup who did not reach base Thursday. But that 13-pitch at-bat preceded a walk and another single that helped the Mets add on after the Pirates started climbing back.

“I know he might have had a couple strikeouts today or something, but he was grinding,” Baty said. “The strikeouts I had too, I was trying to grind, get the pitch count up. All through the lineup, I think we were super scrappy today.”

Unfortunately for the Mets, the keyword in that sentence is “today.” Whether Thursday was a harbinger or aberration will be clearer in time. Small sample sizes cannot be trusted – though they do not always lie.

“It’s 162,” Mendoza said. “There’s gonna be times where it’s gonna be hard. That’s the nature of the business. But just to see it out of the gate against one of the best pitchers in the league, it goes to show you that we’ve got some dangerous guys.”

And indeed, Thursday did demonstrate that when this remodeled lineup is at its most focused (and, perhaps, gifted a few lucky breaks), it is capable of being one of the game’s more productive groups.

Perhaps Benge will look more like the rookie who struck out in his first two at-bats Thursday more often than he looks like the guy who homered in his fourth. But the fact that he could follow two tough at-bats in his first big league game with two solid ones suggests he will not disappear when at-bats go badly.

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