In the past, baseball used increased offense during times of crises. The change to the live ball era after the black sox scandal, 1930 was the biggest offensive season ever and occured right after the stock market crash of 1929 and the start of the great depression. Things leveled out from there for quite awhile during baseballs golden era and they went too far the other way after Maris and Mantle of 1961. They raised the mounds and offense plummeted, culminating with Bob Gibson's 1.12 ERA in 1968.
After that offense increased but the game seemed balanced. Then came the strikes and suddenly 1987 something changed for one season only and balls started flying out of the park.
The world series stealing strike/lockout in 94 was followed by the steroid era and many people have credited the McGwire/Sosa race to and beyond 61 as bringing people back to the game... but once Canseco's book came out, the juicing had to stop and pitchers started flirting with no hitters every week and dominating the game.
This explosion of offense doesnt seem to have any crises behind it. But Manfred did say when he first took over for Selig he wanted more offense. Even talked about rules preventing the extreme defensive shifts. So Im skeptical that Manfred hasnt had anything to do with the increased offense.
I prefer a more balanced game. The one we saw most of the 80s. Where the home run leaders ended up in the 40s and we saw 80-100 stolen base leaders and dominate pitchers too.
The other issue with this constant meddling with offense is... do records matter? Would Hoskins be on his record run if he had been born earlier and come up in 2014? Would Judge be challenging McGwire's rookie record, which also occurred during the 1987 anomaly?