This year when a pull-happy lefty comes up and the Cardinals have his tendencies mapped, Lynn knows what he’ll see when he glances toward third base.

No one.

For the Cardinals, the shift is on.

“We haven’t done it in the past much and now we’re going all-in right away,” Lynn said. “That’s something that we’re going to have to get used to as pitchers. When you’re on the mound and you look to the right and there’s nobody there, it’s kind of weird. We have to get used to the feel of it, the look of it. They tell us now it will work. So, we better get used to it.”

Through the first nine games of this season, the Cardinals already had seen the extremes of shifting. Adams has defied them several times by poking hits to left field. The Cardinals robbed Jay Bruce of a base hit by moving second baseman Kolten Wong into shallow right field. The Pirates, the division’s best practitioners of the shift, stole at least four hits in a game from the Cards, including one by putting an infielder right by second base for Jhonny Peralta.

Wee Willie Keeler’s old suggestion to “hit ‘em where they ain’t” has been flipped. Now they are where batters hit ’em.