The old catcher smiled wryly. The topic was offense, and what could be done to revive it. When John Buck entered professional baseball, in 1998, fans were swooning for sluggers. All these years later, the landscape has tilted. Runs and homers are falling. Strikeouts and infield shifts are soaring. Pitchers rule.

“They wanted it to go back to pitching and defense, didn’t they?” Buck said this spring in Atlanta Braves camp, a few weeks before he retired. “I think it’s a cycle that will go back and forth. If they put the emphasis on improving the offense, they’ll figure a way how.”

The question for Rob Manfred, as he begins his first season as commissioner of Major League Baseball, is whether he should do that. Many hitters would welcome a stimulus package, of sorts, in an age when every new edge seems to benefit pitchers.

The numbers are staggering. Last season, major league teams scored roughly 5,000 fewer runs, and hit roughly 1,500 fewer homers, than they did in 2000 — statistically, the height of the steroid era. The average team scored 4.07 runs per game last season, down from 5.14 in 2000. And pitchers pumped in about 6,000 more strikeouts last season than they did in 2000.