ATLANTA — The Atlanta Braves finally beat the New York Mets, taking advantage of shaky defense to hand Johan Santana the shortest start of his career in a 9-3 victory Tuesday night.
    Tyler Pastornicky's two-run double highlighted a five-run second that finished off Santana. Randall Delgado (2-0) won it for the Braves, who lost their first four games against the Mets this season.
    Two costly errors — Jason Bay dropped a fly ball, Ike Davis made a wild throw — led to a pair of unearned runs against Santana (0-2), who allowed just one run in his first two games.
    He was lifted after 1 1/3 innings, finished off by Jason Heyward's run-scoring single that made it 6-0. Santana had never gone less than three innings in his previous 265 starts.
    The night turned cool and blustery after an afternoon storm front moved through Atlanta, forcing the teams to use the indoor cages for batting practice.
    The swirling winds led to some adventurous plays in the field. Leading off in the bottom of the first, Michael Bourn lifted a fly ball to deep left that looked like an easy out for Bay. After all, he had leaped above the wall the night before to prevent a homer by Jack Wilson.
    This time, the ball deflected off the side of Bay's glove at the edge of the warning track, an error that left Bourn at second base. He tagged and went to third on Heyward's fly out, then did it again on Chipper Jones' sacrifice fly.
    The Braves blew it open in the second. Dan Uggla led off with a walk, Matt Diaz singled to center and Freddie Freeman kept fouling pitches off until he got one he liked from Santana. On the 11th pitch of the at-bat, the first baseman lined an opposite-field double into the left-field corner to bring home Uggla.