MLB Schedule 2026: Paul Skenes Got Chased in Two Thirds of an Inning and That Was Just the Beginning

The Yankees and Giants were playing in San Francisco on a Wednesday night on Netflix, of all places, while people across the nation half-watched from couches and kitchen tables. Opening Night was that. A long winter officially vanished on Thursday when eleven games began simultaneously across time zones, with Yoshinobu Yamamoto cruising through Arizona’s lineup under the lights of Dodger Stadium and the Mets battering Paul Skenes at Citi Field. From the first pitch of the 2026 MLB schedule, there were opinions about the return of baseball.
The exit was the most talked-about event of Opening Day, not a home run or a strikeout. In New York, Paul Skenes—the current National League Cy Young Award winner, the mainstay of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the most anticipated pitcher in any rotation aside from Tarik Skubal—lasted two-thirds of an inning. 37 pitches. A three-run triple, an RBI double, a hit batsman, and the walk to the dugout left Flushing’s sold-out 41,449-person crowd feeling a mixture of amazement and delight. The Mets prevailed 11-7. There is only one game. Everyone is aware of that. Skenes being chased before the first out of the third inning will follow Pittsburgh’s season for a while, but the first day of the schedule has a way of creating narratives that stick whether they deserve to or not.

Reference Links: 2026 MLB Official Schedule — MLB.com 2026 MLB Opening Day Schedule & Scores — USA Today

Observing how the league has organized this first week gives the impression that MLB has genuinely decided to compete for casual attention in a manner that it hasn’t always bothered to do. The Yankees and Giants, a Netflix exclusive, kicked off the schedule. Over the next few days, it spread to NBC, Peacock, Apple TV, Fox, and MLB. Everything else is carried by TV. It’s a streaming strategy that no other major sport has quite tried on this scale for a single week, and it’s possible that this will become the standard moving forward or that it will divide the audience in ways that annoy the devoted fan base. However, it’s not a bad idea to place Opening Night on the world’s most popular streaming service. New York’s Max Fried was on the mound, and Tony Vitello, the Giants’ new manager after a successful stint at Tennessee, was recording his first game as a professional manager. These are not fleeting moments.
The Tigers arrived at Petco Park in Detroit with what may be the most explicit World Series mandate of any baseball team. On the first day of spring training, manager A.J. Hinch informed his players that the mountain was ahead of them before closing camp and stating that October is the only month that matters. Tarik Skubal, the two-time AL Cy Young winner who will be eligible for free agency after this season with a salary of about $400 million, is the vehicle for that goal. He looked the part on Thursday. Detroit defeated San Diego 8-2 at Petco with six scoreless innings, six strikeouts, and zero earned runs. In a five-run first inning, Kevin McGonigle, baseball’s consensus No. 2 prospect going into the season, turned on the first pitch he saw in a major league game and ripped a two-run double off Nick Pivetta. His career got off to a quick start. For years, highlight shows replay this type of debut moment.
The Dodgers won their first game with typical ease because they are the Dodgers. In the seventh inning, Will Smith hit a two-run home run to complete an 8-2 victory over Arizona, and Kyle Tucker, who is new to Los Angeles and is still figuring out his celebration routine after reaching base, lined a double to right to score Shohei Ohtani. With the exception of Freddie Freeman, every starter in the lineup had a hit; this is the kind of insignificant detail that is recorded in a box score and then forgotten by April. It’s more difficult to forget that this team has the most stacked roster in baseball with Ohtani, Tucker, Betts, and Yamamoto, and they’re already acting as though October is more of a formality than a destination.
In Cleveland, the Guardians defeated Seattle 6-4 after Chase DeLauter hit two home runs in his first major league regular season game, including a 422-foot shot to center in the ninth inning that proved to be the game-winning strike. Jacob Misiorowski struck out 11 to set a Brewers Opening Day record in Milwaukee, capping a 14-2 thrashing of the White Sox. By the time the game was decisively decided, it had begun to feel more like a statement than an opener after Milwaukee’s William Contreras cleared the bases with a double in a four-run second inning.
From this point on, each team’s schedule consists of 162 games through the end of September, with the postseason structure continuing into October. It’s difficult not to feel that this particular season has its own unique texture after witnessing everything in just one opening week: the rookies, the veterans, the managers with things to prove, and the pitchers who didn’t quite make it through the first inning. Jackson Chourio, who lost the World Baseball Classic before the regular season even started, is already on the injured list due to a fractured hand. The Mets appear to be a real threat. In October, Detroit’s championship-or-bust mentality usually results in either rings or lengthy discussions about what went wrong. Despite spending the majority of his later years dealing with injuries, Mike Trout continues to be outstanding, setting a franchise record with his fifth career Opening Day home run for the Angels.