NEW YORK -- It's not a normal night at Citi Field when Noah Syndergaard comes out of the New York Mets' bullpen. It's not a normal night when the Mets have the lead and Addison Reed and Jeurys Familia don't pitch the eighth and the ninth.

All of Mets manager Terry Collins' pitching decisions Tuesday made perfect sense, but the result wasn't normal, either.

The Mets lost 6-4 to the Chicago White Sox, the first time in 29 chances this season they've failed to win a game they led after seven innings. They lost this one because on a night when the bullpen had Syndergaard but not Familia, the Mets didn't have enough to shut the game down.

With Syndergaard the choice to pitch the seventh in his bullpen cameo, and with Reed held back to pitch the ninth because Familia threw 67 pitches the past four days, Hansel Robles appeared as the fill-in setup man. The result, a three-run inning that included Tyler Saladino's two-run go-ahead home run, served as a reminder of how good Reed has been in the eighth-inning role, and how important he and Familia have been to the Mets.

Syndergaard is super-important, too, but normally in his role as a dominant starter. His bullpen appearance Tuesday came about because he threw only 33 pitches before being ejected from his start on Saturday.

He didn't pitch the most important inning of the game, just the most thrilling one.

It began with a roar from the Citi Field crowd, a roar that started the moment Syndergaard emerged from the bullpen and continued all the way through to when his name was announced. His first pitch to Adam Eaton was a 100 mph fastball, and eight of the 10 other fastballs he threw in the inning also hit triple digits (with two clocked at 99 mph).

He threw a 95 mph slider to Brett Lawrie, just as he did to Kendrys Morales in Kansas City in his first start this season. And he threw a great 92 mph changeup to strike out Todd Frazier and end the hitless inning.

"Pretty cool," starter Steven Matz said. "I was in [the clubhouse] icing, and to see him come out of the bullpen was pretty impressive."

Matz played a bigger part in Tuesday's game, beginning it with five scoreless but not flawless innings, then departing with two outs into the sixth in his shortest outing since his first start of the season. He left with a lead, but it was down to a single run after Frazier's two-run home run and Dioner Navarro's run-scoring single.

Collins called on Jim Henderson to get out of the sixth. The manager knew he was going to use Syndergaard for an inning, but he had to decide whether to pitch his ace against the top of the White Sox's order in the seventh, or risk Robles in the seventh and hold Syndergaard back for the eighth.

"I thought trying to get the top half out was most important," Collins said. "That's why I brought him in."

Either way, Robles was going to pitch, as Reed waited for a ninth-inning save opportunity that never came.

It wasn't exactly the way Collins planned for the evening to go.

"What I wanted was to be up 8-0 and pitch [Syndergaard] in the ninth," he said.

On this unusual night, the White Sox didn't cooperate.