Well for one thing....it should be pretty obvious to us that PED use is still going on in MLB....I don't know by what measure we could possibly judge it to be less or more but we certainly can see enough to know that it is still with us. So roids are way to simplistic an explanation for what is happening here.Yes there is ebb and flow in this game. The elements that have an impact on offense and other aspects of the game are dynamic.

However these are not numbers that are spiking. They are trending and have been since at least 2006. Runs are down significantly and trending in both leagues. Batting average is down and trending in both leagues. The only difference is that the NL numbers are not coming down as quickly. 2012 BA finished at .253 for the NL and .255 for the AL. 002 points of BA in spite of the fact that pitchers are batting in the NL. The AL has lost 20 points of BA since 2006 and the NL has lost 12 points of BA since the same year. Runs scored on average per team down to 721 for the AL and 683 for the NL way off their peaks of the early 2000's.

Starting pitching is making yet another come back in the numbers of quality starting pitchers. Only this time starting pitching is coming back at a time when relief pitching has been fully developed. We now have relief pitchers slotted for virtually every inning of a game from long relief though specific 7th and 8th inning set up and closer.

We have had other instances in baseballs history of pitching coming back to prominence recovering from down periods. Some down periods are the result of expansion for example. Expansion thins the pool of good pitchers. In other instances rules changes have caused a regression in pitching with pitchers ultimately recovering whatever was lost to them in the rules changes. However I do not see any expansion on the horizon that would significantly thin the ranks of quality pitchers and I don't see rules changes coming either. In my view and I have said this before we are going back to the 1960's style of baseball where pitching truly dominates and defense is once again an more important element of the game. We may not get all the way back to the 1960's but the trend is clearly there and I don't see changes coming in the elements that would forestall a continued decline in the importance of power in wining games when confronted by teams that feature equal pitching, stout defense and multidimensional instead of one dimensional power offense. Defense will return to importance because the ball is going to stay in the yard more often giving fielders more opportunity to shine.

AL teams are simply to one dimensional, to dependent on power to generate offense and power happens to be the easiest thing for good pitching to shut down! if we are satisfied as AL proponents with seeing our teams beat each others brains in only to get waxed in the WS where the focus and intensity are through the roof then fine....we can go on just like this. However if getting to the WS and then getting waxed there is not appealing to us, then the AL needs to change.

The AL teams are all of a feather, virtually all to one dimensional in their pursuit of offense and the one thing that distinguishes them from the NL is the DH. The nature of the beast is to employ the DH the way AL teams employ them and that has created this bias toward power in pursuit of offense. It is hard to miss. You can't really be telling me that you believe that the Yanks were the only AL team in the post season that featured such piss poor plate appearances. As I said before the O's/Yanks series was a travesty, an exercise to determine which team was the more futile....although I have seen folks describe the "action" in that series as "dramatic". I don't know what is dramatic about seeing hitters swinging and missing over slider after slider insisting on trying to pull pitches that you can't pull!

The increased focus and intensity of the post season makes the post season a preview for play in the regular season. Shortly I expect NL teams to start waxing AL teams in regular season inter-league play. So again if we are content seeing our AL teams beat each other to death only to make embarrassing showings in the WS, and eventually in inter-league play we don't have to change at all.