Major League Baseball hitters are on pace to obliterate the record for home runs in a season, a record set in 2000, during the height of the steroids era.

An analysis done by The Ringer traces this homer binge to the second half of 2015 and suggests the surge is due to a bouncier, slightly smaller ball held together by seams lower than before.

Of course, not everyone would use the word “culprit”.

Some are all for the rise in scoring. Even if it comes as guys like Scooter Gennett hits four homers in a game or a soft-hitting shortstop like Didi Gregorius goes deep 20 times in a season, as he did in 2016.

I am not an enthusiast of this sort of scoring rise, given that nearly all of it is produced by the home run, which threatens to take over the game.

I find the home run to be one of the more boring ways to score, three seconds of intense interest — “is it going to clear the fence?” — followed by the completion of a jog around the bases and everyone else standing around watching.

I much, much, much prefer the sequential, multi-player ways of scoring. Three singles. A single and a double. A walk, a steal, a hit-and-run (what a concept) single. A triple and a bunt. Et cetera.

Now that someone seems to have come up with the reason behind the spike in home runs … something can be done about it.

Part of it has been about eliminating other suggested reasons for the soaring home runs, noting that The Ringer analysis “examined and dismissed or discounted several theories about the home run surge, including hotter temperatures (which, in addition to being insufficient to explain the rising home run rate, wouldn’t affect batted-ball speed), a change in the strike zone, the optimization of batting orders, an influx of young home run hitters, teams shutting down top pitchers earlier in the year, hitters acclimating to faster pitchers, a return to widespread PED use, pitchers aiming higher in the zone or throwing more meatballs, and pitchers throwing harder.”

Once those are taken away, the focus moved on to the ball — usually the easiest way to explain a sudden rise in scoring and, particularly, in homers. (The ending of the Dead Ball Era, in 1919, being one obvious case.)

The current analysis found that the Costa Rican-made balls used in MLB are bouncier, slightly smaller and have seams that do not rise as far as before.

A bouncier ball contributes significantly to the “exit velocity” away from swung bats, a rise that apparently can add up to 50 feet on a batted ball.

And a smaller ball, with seams not as prominent, rifles through reduced air resistance — on their way to the seats.

Now that we appear to have identified the cause of the homer increase, it is up to baseball to do something about it.

Baseball needs to recover its historical role as a cerebral game with lots of moving parts aside from the “three true outcomes” (homer, walk, strikeout) that is dumbing-down things.

MLB also needs to reestablish the reputation for the home run being regularly achievable only by particularly gifted players — certainly not including undersized middle infielders.

I would hope and expect baseball will get this figured out.

The game of early 2015 seemed nicely balanced between offense and defense. The game we see this season indicates that it has shifted toward one sort of hit, one now achievable by nearly anyone uppercutting on every pitch.