I am not a sabermetrician, the name given to those who spend lots of time and energy breaking down baseball statistics. Called sabermetrics, a back-formation from the acronym Society for Advanced Baseball Research. Or SABR.

But I have noticed the decline in scoring in baseball, and I am waiting for someone in the journalism world to give me some advanced notion of what is going on. A newspaperman. A blogger. Nate Silver.

While waiting for that, I have spent some time in baseballreference.com, looking at runs and home runs and on-base percentage, going back to the 1990 season.

And do we see?

Four distinct periods.

To wit:

1. A sort of baseline for baseball, through 1992. Numbers I suspect are not dissimilar from those seen in latter half of the 1980s, as well. If I had another hour, I would go look.

2. A sudden surge in 1993, the season before the strike of 1994-95, when an extra 1,000 home runs entered the game (about a 33 percent increase), and a continued climb in scoring and home runs, thereafter, peaking in the year 2000, when a record number of homers were hit (5,693) and teams averaged 832 runs per game and the MLB-wide OBP was .345.

3. A slight retreat of offense in the 2001 season, and then a slow and uneven downward trend for most of the next decade. But this was still a good time for runs and homers.

4. A sudden and significant drop in scoring and homers in 2010, which led to trends down in scoring, home runs and OBP, leading to the current season, which is the most punchless in quite some time. Since, perhaps the 1970s.

I will just list the numbers I took down, starting with 1990.

Year, average runs per team … MLB homers … MLB on-base percentage

1990, 689 … 3,317 …. .325

1991, 697 … 3,383 …. .323

1992, 667 … 3,038 …. .322

1993, 745 … 4,030 … .332

1994*, 800 … 4,698 … .339

1995#, 785 … 4,591 … .338

1996, 815 … 4,962 …. .340

1997, 772 … 4,640 … .337

1998, 777 …. 5,064 … .335

1999, 823 … 5,528 … .345

2000, 832 … 5,693 …. .345

2001, 773 … 5,458 …. .332

2002, 747 … 5,059 … .331

2003, 766 … 5,207 …. .333

2004, 779 … 5,451 …. .335

2005, 744 … 5,017 …. .330

2006, 787 … 5,386 …. .337

2007, 777 … 4,957 …. .336

2008, 753 … 4,878 …. .333

2009, 747 … 5,042 …. .333

2010, 710 … 4,613 …. .325

2011, 694 … 4,552 …. .321

2012, 701 … 4,934 …. .319

2013, 675 … 4,661 …. .318

2014%, 665 … 4,253 … .316

* projected from 114 games to 162

# projected from 144 games to 162

% projected from current levels to full season

What are the pertinent questions?

1. What in happened in 1993? Well, we have part of the answer right off. Two new teams entered MLB, the Colorado Rockies and Florida Marlins. Plus, another 24 or so pitchers who the year before would have been in the minors. But a climb of 33 percent? A thousand more homers? Two teams and 24 new pitchers did that? I think not.

2. What happened in 1999 and 2000, when record numbers of homers were hit and teams averaged 823-plus runs? Again, expansion is a factor, but it came in 1998, with the Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays joining MLB. Whatever impact the new teams had did not show up that first year, however, in terms of runs per team and OBP. Homers went up by 400, but the big jump came in 1999, when they climbed another 500.

3. What happened in 2010?

That is the key one. That is when a sort of plateau/drift for nearly a decade, suddenly headed sharply downward. Since 2009, the average team has gone from scoring 747 runs a game to a projected 665, homers are down from 5,042 to a projected 4,253, and OBP is down from .333 to .316.

In four-plus seasons, about 11 percent of runs have disappeared out of the game, and about 16 percent of home runs.

Is it about drug testing, and the resulting decline in steroid use/abuse? Is it about defensive shifts? More and more pitchers who throw 95mph?

I don’t know the answers to those questions. Maybe all of the above are involved. Maybe the baseballs are somehow different too.

But, clearly, something significant is going on. A five-year trend towards fewer runs is upon us, and it is accelerating this season.

Whether the lords of the game deign to do anything about it … we shall see.