Dissecting what Pirates' Don Kelly, Paul Skenes said after poor Opening Day showing

Opening Day gave everyone a reason to look at Paul Skenes a bit longer than necessary.

He did not make it out of the first inning. The pitch count was ballooning and runs for the New York Mets were adding up. The questions were probably starting to formulate before the inning was over.

Pirates manager Don Kelly is not concerned about Paul Skenes

Then Pittsburgh Pirates manager Don Kelly arrived and swiftly removed the oxygen from the room.

"When you don't make those two plays in center field, it makes it tough because they could have been outs ... The defense cost us some pitches and then cost Paul the first inning there," Kelly said.

That quote does not sound concerned; it sounds deflecting.

Kelly is not focused on Skenes. He is focused on everything else that surrounds Skenes. A read that was just a little bit off. A sun ball. Two plays that extend innings rather than end them. The inning gets some legs, and suddenly, the pitcher you expected to walk off the mound is still on it and laboring through his pitch count.

That is when things start to unravel. And even then, Kelly did not want to make it bigger than it was.

"It's a really tough thing going to get him in the first inning," Kelly said. "But at the bottom of it is Paul's health ... We had to make the move."

That last sentence tells you everything about where the Pirates stand regarding Skenes. This was not about giving up on a struggle; this was about ensuring one rough inning did not cascade into something bigger than the first start of the season.

Paul Skenes gives self-assessment after rough Opening Day outing

Skenes himself was equally simple.

"They did a really good job," Skenes said. "In the moment, maybe a little frustrating, just gotta execute earlier ... Leadoff walk is not great. Some balls landed, the Polanco groundball. You know, stuff like that. The batting average on balls in play thing was super high today, that'll go down as the season goes on."

No finger-pointing or excuses. Just an acceptance that some pitches were not where they should have been early, and the ripple effect made everything that came after more challenging.

There was no indication that anything with Skenes' repertoire was fundamentally altered. The velocity was still elite, and his approach was still there. What was not there was the clean first inning, and what extended it were plays that easily could have been outs.

That distinction usually gets lost somewhere between the box score and the postgame news conference.

Opening Day overreactions happen every year

Opening Day tends to have a way of magnifying things. An exceptional performance becomes an immediate validation. A less than stellar one suddenly feels like a foreboding signal.

In the clubhouse, that was anything but the case.

Kelly was highlighting the missed plays, not the mistakes. The pitcher was owning the execution. Nobody seemed to be hunting for answers they had not already addressed just a week prior.

Skenes is going to have plenty of dominant starts this year. He has established that. Somewhere along the way, though, he was going to have a start where he did not find his groove.

It just happened to fall on Opening Day.

And because of that, it seems so much larger than it was. Listen to Kelly's statement. Listen to Skenes' self-assessment. The takeaway is not that something is wrong; it is just that one inning, on one particular day, slipped away from him.