Offensive Decline of the 2005 MLB Baseball Season

As of today, total runs scored per game are down 0.52 runs a game. Most people attribute this considerable drop in offensive production to the new steroids policies. We are entering a new era where pitching dominates and this will have a serious impact on baseball betting for the next couple of years. Relying too much on past trends and systems of even a year ago will hurt even the astute bettor unless they take into account some of the new trends and angles that we have seen this season.

The most striking statistic is that a larger number of games are resulting in shutouts. 11.1% of the games played to date have resulted in a shutout as opposed to an average of 9.68% over the past several years. This means that pitchers are more dominant than ever before.

We can no longer