On the strangest Opening Day in franchise history, the Mets delivered a taste of normalcy this afternoon at Citi Field by beginning their season, as they so often have, with a victory.
Between piped-in crowd noise, cardboard cutouts occupying some parts of the seats, and SNY’s introduction of a live K-zone in a real baseball game, the experience itself was pretty disorienting. But Jacob deGrom did what he usually does, making it look easy to get outs at the major league level. Since he had a setback during summer camp with some lower back tightness, deGrom was limited to a lower pitch count than he otherwise would have been, but he threw 72 pitches in five brilliant, scoreless innings of work.