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There's been a lot made of the drop in offense in the American League this season with reasons ranging from weather to a paucity of good young players used to explain why the bats aren't thumping as they have in the past. There's been another reason tossed around as well, the presumed disappearance of steroids in the post-testing game of baseball.

Jeff Blair of the Toronto Globe and Mail picks up on this during a look at the scuffling Toronto Blue Jay offense in general and Alex Rios in particular. He describes J.P. Ricciardi watching Rios take a called third strike and say, cryptically, that we'll see a lot less balls in the seats.

If you're J.P. Ricciardi, you can't just attribute it to the Mitchell report or anything like that, because you're an employee of Major League Baseball and, well, he just can't go there, you know?

I think if Ricciardi could use something like that to explain away his team's offensive production, he'd be wise to do it actually. Wouldn't make it true but it might give him an out.

Using PED's to write off the decline in offense makes no sense. It doesn't take into account that the players using weren't just power hitters, weren't just hitters and didn't just play in the American League. It doesn't explain why the National League is outpacing its 2007 performance to this point in the season and it certainly doesn't explain why Rios and the Jays can't hit.

Even if it were true that the lack of steroids had returned us to the Dead Ball era, it doesn't begin to explain Toronto's problems. Ricciardi is arguing that the lack of balls flying over the fence is what's driving down offensive numbers. It's not true.

Take the Blue Jays. They've hit 30 home runs in 47 games and are scoring 3.79 runs per game. If it were true that good offensive baseball were reliant on the home run, then Minnesota and Oakland, with fewer homers per night than the Jays, would be lagging behind them. They aren't though, in fact each team is scoring more than a half-run per game more than Toronto.

Hell, it's still just May and offense might pick up and start to resemble years past. Even if the league averages rise, though, expect Toronto to be at the bottom of the pack.

(H/T BBTF)