NEW YORK -- Max Scherzer did not deviate from the scouting report. He had no reason to. Earlier Wednesday, when Scherzer had faced Yankees slugger Aaron Judge -- the best hitter going, if not the best hitter alive -- with two men on base and two outs at Citi Field, the Mets ace struck him out on nothing but off-speed pitches. So as Judge approached the plate again in a nearly identical situation in the seventh, Scherzer changed almost nothing.

The resulting strikeout punctuated Scherzer’s night on his 38th birthday, allowing the Mets to maintain their edge in a game they eventually won, 3-2, on Starling Marte’s walk-off single in the ninth. With that, the Mets swept the Subway Series for the sixth time in history and the first time since 2014.

“This is fun,” Scherzer said. “This is for bragging rights of New York.”

In front of the 10th-largest crowd in Citi Field history, there were enough accolades to go around -- enough for Pete Alonso, who homered in the second inning, and for Seth Lugo, who delivered five significant outs, and for Marte, who ripped a single off Wandy Peralta to send everybody home. But it was Scherzer who shouldered the most significant chunk of work, delivering seven shutout innings in his first Subway Series game.

In doing so, Scherzer struck out Judge thrice, retired him four times and sent him on his way to an 0-for-5 night. Here’s how:

At-bat No. 1: Flyout to right
This at-bat didn’t last long, but it nonetheless colored the rest of Judge’s evening. In his initial matchup with the American League MVP candidate, Scherzer threw a first-pitch fastball on the outer half of the plate. Judge didn’t miss it, taking the pitch 341 feet to the lip of the warning track in right.

It would be awhile before Judge would see a fastball again.

“Especially after the first at-bat that I jumped all over the heater, I was kind of sitting on a slider the rest of the game,” Judge said. “But sometimes when that happens, you expand the zone a little bit looking for it.”

At-bat No. 2: Strikeout swinging
Unwilling to risk another first-pitch fastball, Scherzer attacked Judge with nothing but off-speed pitches when he came to the plate with two men on base in a one-run game. The sequence went slider, slider, slider, changeup, slider; on the last of those, Judge flailed at a pitch that dove away from the outer corner of the plate.

“I know the type of damage he can do against the fastball, and I’ve got to keep him at bay,” Scherzer said. “Sometimes, your off-speed pitches become your primary pitches, and I thought tonight, that was a scenario where that kind of played true.”

At-bat No. 3: Strikeout swinging
When Judge returned to the plate to lead off the sixth, Scherzer was a bit more aggressive with him, understanding that a solo homer couldn’t cost him the lead. He jumped ahead on a pair of fastballs, then went for the whiff on two off-speed pitches: first a changeup, then another slider, which Scherzer again located near the bottom of the zone.

“I’m sure as a hitter, you go up there, ‘Oh, he’s pitching me the slider,’ so sometimes you sit on it,” catcher Tomás Nido said. “But he seemed to think that we were trying to trick him or something.”

At-bat No. 4: Strikeout swinging
Once again in the seventh, Judge came to bat with two men on base and two outs. Once again, Scherzer mostly kept his fastball in its holster. After jumping ahead of Judge on three consecutive sliders, Scherzer threw a token heater near Judge’s fists to keep him off balance. He followed it up with another slider well outside the zone to strike out Judge on his final pitch of the evening.

“I recognize how good of a hitter he is,” Scherzer said. “He can hit me. I’m not going to sit here and act like I’m better than him. He can definitely take me deep. I also believe I have the stuff to get him out.”

That’s notable against a player such as Judge, an MVP candidate with 38 home runs who had gone 0-for-5 four times in 95 games entering the night. Before Scherzer, only Oakland’s Frankie Montas had managed to strike out Judge three times in a game.

That Scherzer did it in front of a sold-out crowd, on multiple occasions with men on base, and on his birthday as well?

“You want to come to the park and get a win,” Scherzer said. “That’s all I wanted for my birthday. So that’s what we got.”