Mandatory Credit: Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports

Looking to build on the most impressive outing of his brief Mets’ tenure last Tuesday against the Giants, Max Scherzer spun a second straight gem against an upper-echelon National League club on Monday evening in St. Louis.

In fact, Scherzer had a nearly identical line against St. Louis as his last outing, tossing seven more scoreless innings, allowing two hits, one walk and striking out ten batters. Scherzer stymied a deep Cardinals lineup by mixing his devastating arsenal of pitches to keep the Redbirds off balance all night.

Scherzer cruised on his first chance through the Cardinals lineup, not allowing a single baserunner among the first nine hitters he faced, and striking out four of them.

Scherzer encountered his first jam in the third inning. After recording the first two outs of the inning, Scherzer walked Tommy Edman and allowed a single to Paul Goldschmidt before punching out Tyler O’Neill on a 97 MPH fastball at the top of the strike zone to end the inning.

Scherzer put it back in cruise control after that inning, retiring the next seven Cardinals before Goldschmidt hit a soft seeing-eye grounder that went for an infield single in the sixth. Scherzer responded to the mini-threat imposed by the Goldschmidt single by striking out O’Neill looking and retiring Nolan Arenado on a popout to second. Scherzer again went 1-2-3 in the seventh, ending that frame by striking out Edmundo Sosa for the third time on the night.

Despite his sterling outing, Scherzer departed after seven innings without a chance to receive a win, as his counterpart, Miles Mikolas, fired seven shutout innings of his own.

“We throw bullpens at the same place down in Jupiter in the offseason,” Mikolas said of Scherzer. “I was hoping… we get the best of him so I could kind of rub it in over the winter, but I’m sure we’ll see him again down the line.”

Scherzer threw 101 pitches on the night, 45 of which were fastballs. He averaged 93.9 mph on his fastball on the night, right in line with his 94.0 mph average on the season, and induced 10 whiffs on the fastball. Scherzer mixed in all of his secondary pitches, throwing 22 sliders, 14 changeups, 11 curveballs and nine cutters. Scherzer induced nine whiffs on his slider, one whiff a piece with the changeup and curveball, and three whiffs on his cutter.

Scherzer focused on his teammates in speaking to reporters after the game, stating “we’re just playing good team baseball… but we haven’t won anything yet.”