After being snubbed for the All-Star Game, Mitch Keller had no shortage of motivation to show he’s one of baseball’s top starting pitchers. It didn’t take long for the Pittsburgh Pirates right-hander to remind the New York Mets why he’s the staff ace, striking out the side in the first inning on the way to earning his 10th win before the break. Behind Keller’s strong start and a five-run sixth inning, the Pirates beat the Mets, 8-2, on Monday afternoon before 16,158 at PNC Park to preserve a four-game series split. Keller turned disappointment into dominance, allowing two runs on seven hits without a walk while recording six strikeouts in an eight-inning display Pirates manager Derek Shelton said "puts an exclamation point” on his proclamation a day earlier that Keller was deserving of being selected to the Midsummer Classic. "That was an All-Star performance,” Shelton said. "If that’s not an All-Star, I’m hard pressed to see what is.” The Pirates have a pair of All-Stars in outfielder Bryan Reynolds and rookie right-hander Paul Skenes, whose inclusion might have come at Keller’s expense. Even so, Keller professed to put any animosity about his exclusion aside and focus on finishing the first half with a flourish and having a strong second half of the season. "No, man. After yesterday, just flushed it. Nothing I can do about it,” said Keller, who was selected to his first All-Star Game last year. "Super happy for Paul and Reynolds. They both deserve it. So, yeah, I flushed it after yesterday. Had one day to be disappointed about it. … I mean, it sucks when you don’t get the chance to go, but there’s literally nothing I can do about it. Not gonna worry about it.” His first inning told a different story. Keller came out firing, throwing strikes on nine of his first 10 pitches in getting Francisco Lindor swinging and Brandon Nimmo and Francisco Alvares looking at called third strikes. In the five-pitch second, Mark Vientos singled, but Keller got Luis Torrens to ground into an inning-ending 6-4-3 double play. The Pirates provided strong defense behind Keller, especially first baseman Rowdy Tellez. He stretched to his right to catch a Jose Iglesias line drive to start the third. Then, after Jeff McNeil singled and Keller hit Lindor with a pitch, Tellez made a spectacular diving stop to his left on a sharp Nimmo grounder down the first-base line to end the frame. When Vientos hit a 388-foot fly ball to center, Jack Suwinski made a catch against the wall for the final out in the fourth. "I just tried to attack the zone and fill it up as much as possible, be on the aggression,” Keller said. "Good things will happen if you do that.” The Pirates spotted Keller a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the fourth, when Andrew McCutchen worked a nine-pitch at-bat to draw a leadoff walk against Mets starter Christian Scott, who surrendered his only hit over 5 2/3 innings when Oneil Cruz crushed a 2-1 splitter 431 feet into the visiting bullpen for his 14th home run. Keller retired the side again in the fifth, getting McNeil looking at a 98.1-mph four-seamer inside for a called third strike to end the inning. By doing so, Keller became the fourth Pirates pitcher to record 300 strikeouts at PNC Park, joining Paul Maholm (383), Francisco Liriano (371) and Gerrit Cole (356). But Harrison Bader dropped a leadoff single under the glove of a diving Reynolds in left in the sixth, and Keller left a 3-0 cutter over the middle that Nimmo hit 428 feet to center for a game-tying homer. It was the only extra-base hit Keller allowed. "He made one bad pitch,” Shelton said. "The ball Bader hit debatably fell in probably because of where we were playing. He made one bad pitch in eight innings, and it was hot and he had to sit through two long innings.” When McCutchen was hit by a pitch in the sixth, the Mets challenged the call and had it overturned. After getting McCutchen to fly out to left to retire his seventh consecutive batter, the Mets replaced Scott with righty Eric Orze (0-1), who made his major-league debut. The Pirates pulled a two-out rally, as Reynolds walked and Cruz hit a line-drive single to put runners on the corners for Tellez, who beat the throw on a grounder to third to drive in the go-ahead run. It only got worse for the Mets. They replaced Orze with Adrian Houser, only for Nick Gonzales to hit a sharp grounder down the right-field line for a double to score Cruz. McNeil bobbled the ball after it ricocheted off the short fence for an error that allowed Tellez to score and Gonzales to reach third. After Gonzales scored on a wild pitch to make it 6-2, Joshua Palacios hammered Houser’s 2-1 sinker 374 feet to right field for his first homer of the season for the Pirates and a five-run lead. Keller gave up a pair of two-out singles to Nimmo and Alvarez in the eighth but got Pete Alonso to pop up to first in foul territory to finish a 107-pitch performance and receive a standing ovation from Pirates fans as he walked off the mound. "It just shows the durability, his ability to be present every day,” Tellez said. "He’s been here the longest of anybody, continuously. When you get him on the mound, you know what you’re getting every day. I think that’s impressive.” Shelton said Cruz tweaked his hamstring rounding third base, so the Pirates had Ke’Bryan Hayes pinch-hit for him in the eighth. Hayes hit a leadoff single to right-center, advanced to third on a single by Gonzales and scored when Palacios grounded into a forceout. With a depleted bullpen, the Pirates used right-hander Brent Honeywell Jr., who had his contract selected Sunday from Triple-A Indianapolis, to replace Keller and finish off the ninth. Keller’s eight-inning outing was his second-deepest of the season — behind his May 6 complete-game win over the Los Angeles Angels — and one of his most effective, especially under the circumstances. "That’s what a guy that leads a staff, that’s what he does,” Shelton said. "That’s what a guy that pitches Opening Day does. That’s what a guy that, in my mind, is an All-Star does. It was outstanding.” Kevin Gorman is a TribLive reporter covering the Pirates. A Baldwin native and Penn State graduate, he joined the Trib in 1999 and has covered high school sports, Pitt football and basketball and was a sports columnist for 10 years. He can be reached at kgorman@triblive.com. Remove the ads from your TribLIVE reading experience but still support the journalists who create the content with TribLIVE Ad-Free. 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