NEW YORK -- Robinson Cano stared at the pitch with complete disinterest, shifting his body weight in a way that made his intentions plain: there was no way Cano was swinging.

The reason why was obvious. Upon entering with the bases loaded and two outs in the fifth inning Wednesday, Twins rookie reliever Andrew Vasquez hit Brandon Nimmo with a pitch and walked Pete Alonso, bringing up Cano. The second baseman took a ball high, a ball low and another way high. Ball four, at that point, seemed a formality.

So went the Mets’ curious rally in the fifth inning of their 9-6 win over the Twins: Single. Walk. Walk. Baserunning blunder. Walk. Hit batsman. Walk. Walk. Walk. When Wilson Ramos hit a two-run single to cap things, he became the ninth consecutive Met to reach base. The middle seven did so without the benefit of a hit or an error, breathing life into a Mets offense that, entering the inning, had not recorded a hit.

For the Mets, it was a boon. It was also continued evidence of their offensive diversity. Early this season, the Mets scored mainly via situational and opposite-field hitting. On the first part of their homestand, they began bashing homers. Wednesday, they demonstrated the sort of plate discipline needed to punish wildness.

And the Twins offered plenty of wildness.

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“You can’t count on the other team walking six guys,” Mets outfielder Michael Conforto said. “But in this case, they just didn’t make their pitches.”

The fifth inning began innocently enough, with a Ramos groundout and a Jeff McNeil hit -- the Mets’ first off Twins starter Jake Odorizzi, who proceeded to walk the next two batters. With pitcher Noah Syndergaard batting, McNeil then committed the sort of blunder that could have derailed the rally completely. As an Odorizzi pitch skipped to the backstop, McNeil bolted for home, but froze halfway to become an easy target. Instead of having the bases loaded and one out, the Mets found themselves at real risk of coming away with nothing.

What they didn’t count on was the wildness to come. Syndergaard waited out Odorizzi, laying off three more balls to reload the bases. Then Vasquez entered, and the inning caught fire.

Nimmo, who was 0-for-2 with two strikeouts at that point, exchanged a bruise on his upper back for an RBI. Alonso and Cano followed with walks. The Twins changed pitchers to no avail; Conforto also walked with the bases loaded, before Ramos capped the rally with a two-run single.

In the SNY booth, play-by-play announcer Gary Cohen exclaimed, “This is nuts!” And it was. The Mets became the first team since the 1994 Yankees to record at least seven consecutive walks or hit batsmen, and the first team since the 2017 A’s to force in at least four runs in an inning via walk or HBP.

“You never want to wish that on anyone,” Nimmo said.

The Mets, though, would take it -- particularly Syndergaard, whose performance was better than his final line -- seven innings, four runs -- might indicate. At just 87 pitches through seven innings, Syndergaard came back out for the eighth, but allowed three consecutive hits to open the inning. All three wound up scoring.

By that point, the Twins had given the Mets plenty of cushion.

“I don’t think we put even one take sign on,” manager Mickey Callaway said. “I think we just did a great job of being patient, and doing what it took to score some runs.”