PITTSBURGH -- No matter what, Saturday night was going to be different. For the first time in more than four months, the Pirates played a game against someone other than their teammates. For the first time in nearly 10 months, they did so under the lights at PNC Park.

The only people in the stands were a handful of photographers, ballpark staff and players scattered under the tents beside each dugout. Some players worked out on cardio machines set up along the main concourse area behind home plate. When Francisco Lindor reached first base after a first-inning single, he and Josh Bell pulled up the face coverings they’d been wearing around their necks.

For Derek Shelton, different wasn’t a bad thing. Pittsburgh’s 5-3 loss to Cleveland was not officially his managerial debut, which will come Friday in St. Louis. But after months of waiting and weeks of workouts in shorts and T-shirts, he finally got to put on his No. 17 uniform in his own office and manage the Pirates against another team at PNC Park.

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“It was good,” Shelton said. “I’ve been waiting a little while, as you guys know, to sit and look at that skyline and watch a game with another team.”

While Shelton appreciated all the changes, Joe Musgrove tried to treat it like any other night. Well, not just any night. He approached his three-inning outing like it was the Opening Day start he’ll make Friday against the Cardinals at Busch Stadium.

After being limited for so long to bullpen sessions, live batting practice and intrasquad scrimmages that ended with coaches playing all over the diamond, he was ready for the real thing.

“Intensity-wise, my only goal was to go out and dominate,” Musgrove said. “Not trying to work on anything anymore, not trying to add pitches. I'm not trying to necessarily tune anything up. It's just go out there and compete and get a feel for that atmosphere with no fans and having real competition in the box and not facing your own guys. I got to pitch a little bit differently than I’ve been pitching our guys the past couple weeks. I felt really good."

Musgrove looked ready for his first career Opening Day start, too, building off an encouraging Spring Training and a strong Summer Camp. The right-hander allowed only one hit and a walk while striking out five over his scheduled three innings of work. Of his 40 pitches, 30 were strikes and 10 were swinging strikes. He used everything in his six-pitch arsenal but mostly relied on his sinker and slider.

“I went full-go. I went with my best stuff. I treated it like a normal game,” Musgrove said. “I had those nerves. I had the butterflies just like I do before every start. But I don’t think you push those things down and cram them away. You face them, you embrace them, and you try to use them to your advantage.”

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Some of the differences were hard to ignore. When Musgrove took the mound, he warmed up to Trevor Williams’ pre-start music: “Even Flow” by Pearl Jam. After that, the ballpark was filled with pumped-in crowd noise and pre-recorded reactions to big plays. In the first inning, reliever Richard Rodríguez sat in the first row of seats with his feet up on the home dugout. Starting pitcher Derek Holland found a seat down the right-field line, putting plenty of distance between himself and everyone else in the ballpark

Musgrove found it easy to tune all that out, though.

"It still felt like a game,” Musgrove said. “Everyone talks about how intense the crowd might be and the noise, but when you're on the mound, man, you've got tunnel vision. You can hardly even see your dugouts. You've really got what's right behind the plate and the umpire. So that visual, for me, was pretty much the same.”

Left-hander Steven Brault and right-hander Chad Kuhl, who likely will fill the fifth spot in Pittsburgh’s rotation as tandem starters, each worked two scoreless innings. The Pirates scored the first runs of the year at PNC Park in the fifth inning, when right fielder Guillermo Heredia knocked a two-run single up the middle off Cleveland starter Zach Plesac.

In the sixth, Bell ripped a double off the center-field wall against lefty Oliver Perez, and pinch-runner Phillip Evans scored on a single by Erik González.

The Pirates gave up the lead in the eighth, however. Reliever Kyle Crick struggled to command his fastball and slider, loading the bases on two walks and a single before Christian Arroyo smacked a game-tying double to left field. Yu Chang put Cleveland ahead with a double down the left-field line off right-hander Dovydas Neverauskas, and right-hander Nick Burdi gave up a run in the ninth.

But the exhibition loss didn’t seem to dampen Shelton’s spirits at all. After the last out, he hurried to PNC Park’s press conference room to conduct his postgame interview on Zoom. He had already shed his jersey for a T-shirt featuring the club’s modified Jolly Roger logo, one with his red bandana moved down to serve as a face covering.

It was another reminder that this night was different, yet familiar in one significant way.

“That was pretty cool,” Shelton said as he sat down. “Baseball at PNC.”