MLB: What Exactly Happened To Offense In the 1990s

As yet another Hall of Fame voting season is underway and debates rage on, one question is seemingly misunderstood: what exactly was behind the offensive explosion in MLB in the 1990s?

It’s no surprising thing to state that the 1990s ushered in an offensive explosion that seemingly just “corrected” itself in the last 3-5 years with a pretty heavy shift to pitching. However, when you read the discussions about the Hall of Fame votes for players from that era each offseason, you would think that there was only one reason – steroids/PEDs (which are not the same thing, but we’ll get into that later

In fact, there were many factors in play that definitely changed the game offensively for a time period from roughly 1993-2010. We’re going to take a look at each one of them here.

But First…

Just how much of an offensive change did we see in what is referred to as “the steroid era”?

Let’s start with a look at our first, and most oft-reported reasoning – performance enhancing drugs:

Next: PEDs