He threw 13 pitches, seven of which were strikes.

Last week, Francisco had his knee drained and underwent an MRI in Port St. Lucie, but the scan showed no damage to his knee.

Michael Baron: Francisco was awful this past spring. He didn’t have much life to his pitches and had very little command of the strike zone on top of that. To his credit, he wasn’t pitching in save situations and a lot of pitchers, especially closers, need to pitch in their normal routines and circumstances in order to achieve positive results. Terry Collins said several times this spring he wasn’t worried about Francisco’s spring numbers because of that, and on Thursday, Francisco made his manager look good from that perspective. He had better velocity and movement than at any point during Spring Training, and showed no ill effects from the discomfort he had in his knee last week. I’d like to see how the knee responds in back-to-back outings, especially with the cooler weather he will be pitching in over the next few days.

Kirk Nieuwenhuis is making his major league debut today, and seven of the eight position players in today’s lineup are homegrown.

Here are today’s starting lineups:

R.A. Dickey (8-13, 3.28 ERA in 2011) will start for the Mets. Despite his record, Dickey set a career high with 208 2/3 innings pitched last season, and his 3.28 ERA was his second-lowest in nine big league seasons. Dickey is making his 11th appearances and eighth career start against the Braves today, and he’s 1-4 with a 4.01 ERA in 49 1/3 innings against them.

Jair Jurrjens (13-6, 2.96 ERA in 2011) will start for the Braves. After a tremendous first half in which he pitched to a 1.87 ERA, Jurrjens made just seven starts after the All-Star Break thanks to a bone bruise in his knee. In 13 career starts against the Mets, Jurrjens is 8-4 with a 2.94 ERA over 82 2/3 innings.

In 376 plate appearances last season, Tejada had a .360 on-base percentage while hitting .284 with 36 RBI.

Michael Baron: I don’t know if it’s the most glamorous move, and it could be argued that Daniel Murphy could hit leadoff as well. But Tejada walked at a higher rate than Murphy last year, and it’s clear that while Murphy is probably going to be the better hitter of the two, Tejada has more plate discipline than Murphy. That isn’t meant to be a dig on Murphy – rather, his great ability to hit line drives is better suited to set the table for the middle of the order with Tejada already on base, as opposed to having Tejada hit second in this scenario.

The one concern I have with this move is from a mental perspective. By moving Tejada to the leadoff spot, he is immediately being asked to replace the role vacated by Jose Reyes. Obviously, he can’t do it to that degree, but he is a young kid, and I worry about the pressure which he might feel in this position on this team right now.