Baseball thinks it has a speed-of-game issue. A dwindling-popularity issue. A how-do-we-get-the-kids-to-like-us issue.

What it really has is a credibility issue.

Take the issue of home runs. There are a lot of them lately. A record number.

Whenever home runs spike, baseball’s credibility suffers. In the mid-1990s, home runs went up. Individual numbers ballooned in a historically improbable way. We know why; that was the steroid era.

Now home runs are on a pace to obliterate the record set in 2017. Four of the top five home run seasons have come in the past four years.

And, again, the credibility of the league — and its leaders — is in question. There are new charges of juicing: not the players, but the balls.

The American League’s starting All-Star pitcher, Justin Verlander, called the balls a “f—ing joke.” He pointed out that Major League Baseball bought baseball manufacturer Rawlings in 2018 and also noted that Commissioner Rob Manfred has wanted to stimulate offense.

“If any other $40 billion company bought out a $400 million company and the product changed dramatically, it’s not a guess as to what happened,” Verlander told ESPN. “We all know what happened. (Manfred) said we want more offense. All of a sudden, he comes in, the balls are juiced? It’s not coincidence. We’re not idiots.”

The players aren’t idiots. Neither is the public.

There aren’t many ways to inject excitement into regular-season baseball. Home runs are one way (though purists find too many as tedious as none at all). The league is on pace to hit 6,668, a 19% rise over last year and a 9% rise over the record 6,105 hit in 2017.

All we have heard from MLB for years is the league needs to attract younger fans, find more excitement, create some drama that might get sports fans to look up from their phones where they are tracking the destination of NBA free agents and actually notice baseball.

And suddenly, home runs start flying out of the parks at a record pace? Yet Manfred claims that MLB, which owns the ball manufacturer, has absolutely nothing to do with it?

As those kids who aren’t watching baseball would say, with an eye roll, “Yeah, right.”

Ann Killion is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: akillion@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @annkillion