“The hitters aren’t keeping up,” said Don Mattingly, Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers to the LA Times.

Over the last 15 years there has been a striking decline in offensive production in Major League Baseball. In the 2000 season, teams were scoring, 5.14 runs per game on average. Last year, teams were down to 4.1 runs per game and batters hit for a combined .251 batting average. Clubs also hit 1500 fewer home runs last year than in 2000.

The last time hitters struggled so severely was in the “Dead Ball Era” which was over a century ago. The theories behind why there was such little offense in the early 20th century have to do with greater ballpark dimensions, the introduction of the foul-strike rule, and the baseball itself which was commonly manipulated by pitchers using various substances including their own spit. Balls were also and in play for 100+ pitches unlike today where MLB games often use between 30 and 120 baseballs for one game.

The 2014 season might not have had many of the biggest contributing factors of the “Dead Ball Era”  but was still the worst for hitters since the designated hitter rule was introduced in 1973.

So why is offense on such a downward trend?

In 1993 offense was at a high due to expansion which introduced several unqualified pitchers to Major League Baseball, offering hitters an advantage. The early 1990’s were also a time when Performance Enhancing Drugs were beginning to be widely used by professional athletes and leagues were not yet proactive about the issue.

In 2015, the game has changed significantly. There has been no such expansion since 1993 and the movement against Performance Enhancing Drugs has been brought to the forefront of baseball’s biggest issues.

Another huge change to baseball is the introduction of analytics. Advanced statistics have changed the way that Major League teams construct their rosters and evaluate personnel. One of the biggest results of analytics is the increase in defensive shifts for specific hitters. Scouting reports might entail where hitters send the majority of a certain type of pitch and that information can allow a team to adjust their defense to have the greatest possible chance of recording an out. The majority of batters have not yet adjusted to hitting where the shifts aren’t. The hope of the league is that batters will adjust to yet another major change to the game.

“You have to give so much credit to pitching.” Dodgers Hitting Coach Mark McGuire told the LA Times. To this point, some are beginning to name the current era of Baseball after the young dominant pitchers who have taken the league by storm with their high-velocity arms.

Pitchers are throwing harder than ever and have an increased variety of pitches making it more challenging for hitters. They’re also being assisted by the analytical revolution, and are able to target batters cold zones more efficiently than ever. The League Office has taken note of the trend and is evaluating the situation to see if a future rule change is necessary.

Commissioner Rob Manfred told the LA Times, “We’re trying to decide whether we have an aberration in terms of these numbers or whether we have a trend that’s going to continue. We haven’t even reached the conclusion we have a problem yet. Despite that, we are thinking about possible solutions in the event that we decide there’s a problem.”

This could be just be another period of adjustment to an always changing game but no matter what, Major League Baseball will still be the same game even if a small rule change might be what’s needed to preserve it.