CHICAGO -- If right-hander Reynaldo López had delivered the kind of start he did in Tuesday’s 5-2, 11-inning loss to the Mets during his struggle-filled first half -- when he recorded the highest ERA in baseball -- things might have been quite a bit different.

Lopez needed 103 pitches to get through 5 1/3 innings, walked four and allowed six hits. But he still managed to give his team a chance to win, as the Mets finished 0-for-12 against him with runners in scoring position and stranded nine baserunners.

• Box score

This total included two in the first, a runner on third (with nobody out) in the third, two in the fourth and the bases loaded in the fifth. Lopez finished with six strikeouts and 10 swinging strikes.

“Maybe if I had to face those situations in the first half, the results would be way different than today,” said Lopez through interpreter Billy Russo after making a fourth straight second half start allowing two runs or fewer. “But like I said before, I'm a completely different pitcher in the second half.

“I'm in a better mindset, my mind is in a better place right now. I think that I am a better pitcher because of that. I was able to clean up a few things, and mentally I'm much better. And that's the biggest difference. That's why, probably, in a game like today, I was able to minimize damage and to keep the team in the game.”

Lopez’s escape act, with a fastball topping out at 97.9 mph, and expert relief work from Jace Fry, Evan Marshall, Aaron Bummer and potential trade candidate Alex Colomé put the White Sox in position to rally against Noah Syndergaard and two Mets relievers in the eighth. A safety squeeze by Jon Jay fell between pitcher Justin Wilson and first baseman Pete Alonso to load the bases with one out for José Abreu, who has a .296 average and 48 RBIs with runners in scoring position this season.

Abreu also is mired in a 6-for-40 slump over his last 10 games, and he hit an inning-ending double-play grounder against reliever Seth Lugo, leaving the score at 2-1.

“He's a little cool right now,” said manager Rick Renteria. “I think he might be pressing a little bit, trying to do too much. He's got to get back to just taking what they give him, get pitches up ... so he could drive balls and do what he normally does.”

In the last 21 games, the White Sox have left 138 runners on base and have a .188 average with runners in scoring position. Syndergaard didn’t actually allow many of those chances on Wednesday, yielding one unearned run over 7 1/3 innings with 11 strikeouts and one walk.

Mets closer Edwin Diaz yielded the tying run in the ninth without the White Sox getting a hit thanks to Tim Anderson's sacrifice fly, but Diaz struck out Adam Engel with two on to end the threat. Home runs from Jeff McNeil and Michael Conforto off reliever Josh Osich gave the Mets the extra-inning victory.

The loss dropped the White Sox to 4-14 in the second half, a long way from their far from dominant but certainly impressive 42-44 first half. It’s a frustrating time for the White Sox, who have Anderson and Eloy Jiménez back in the lineup, but lost Yoán Moncada in the second inning to right hamstring tightness.

This rough stretch is not what the team expected.

“We were expecting better results,” Lopez said. “None of us are trying to go out there and try to do things the wrong way. None of us are trying to go out there to fail. … But it doesn't matter. For us, it's just try to go day by day and try to win every day. Don't try to think about what happened today or what can happen in a week. Just try to win every day.”