Mother Nature forced right-hander Allan Winans to wait an extra day to make his season debut for the Atlanta Braves.
Scheduled to pitch in place of injured ace Spencer Strider, Winans will look to lead the Braves to victory on Thursday afternoon when they conclude their series against the visiting New York Mets.
Atlanta rebounded from an 8-7 setback in the series opener on Monday by jumping out to a six-run lead and holding on for a 6-5 victory over New York on Tuesday.
Winans was slated to pitch on Wednesday, but that game was postponed approximately three hours before the scheduled start time of 7:20 p.m. ET. The contest will be made up on Sept. 26.
“You can look at the radar. It’s not real good,” Atlanta manager Brian Snitker said on Wednesday. “If we were playing at 7:30 (p.m. Thursday), this probably would have been a different story. You’d probably hang around. But with us playing at 12:20, it’s a different animal.”
Winans (1-2, 5.29 ERA in 2023) made his major league debut with the Braves last season and started six games, splitting a pair of contests against New York. He scattered four hits and struck out nine in seven scoreless innings in a 21-3 romp over the Mets on Aug. 12 before getting shelled for seven runs on nine hits in 4 1/3 frames of a 10-4 loss nine days later.
A 17th-round draft pick in 2018 by the Mets, Winans, 28, started for Triple-A Gwinnett on April 2 and allowed two runs in 5 2/3 innings against Louisville.
New York will send left-hander Jose Quintana (0-1, 2.61 ERA) to the mound on Thursday. He allowed one run on five hits over 5 2/3 innings in a no-decision against the Cincinnati Reds last Friday.
Quintana, 35, is in the final season of a two-year, $26 million contract after going 3-6 with a 3.57 ERA in 13 starts last year.
Marcell Ozuna is 10-for-22 (.455) with one home run against Quintana, who is 2-5 with a 6.75 ERA in eight career starts vs. Atlanta. Quintana has limited Braves first baseman Matt Olson to four hits in 18 at-bats (.222).
Pete Alonso hit a three-run homer in the eighth inning on Tuesday to help New York attempt to rally from a 6-0 deficit. The Mets added two runs in the ninth before Alonso struck out with a runner at first base to end the game.
“I thought the fight was there the whole game,” New York manager Carlos Mendoza said. “For us to put the (tying) runner on base in the ninth inning after we got down early, it shows a lot about this team. Offensively, I like what we’re seeing.”
Also on Wednesday, the Mets transferred ace Kodai Senga from the 15- to the 60-day injured list and optioned right-hander Dedniel Nunez to Triple-A Syracuse, clearing a roster spot for the arrival of 29-year-old left-hander Tyler Jay from Syracuse. Senga was shut down in February after he told the team he felt discomfort in his throwing shoulder.
Jay, a first-round pick of the Minnesota Twins in 2015, was pitching in the independent Frontier League when he signed with the Mets last August. He has yet to appear in a major league game.
