The Decade of the No-No: We're seeing the most MLB no-hitters since the '60s

Jake Arrieta's no-hitter Sunday night against the Los Angeles Dodgers was the sixth of the season in MLB. That's quite a lot for something we usually think of being so rare and so memorable. Can you even remember the others from this season?

Well, there was Mike Fiers nine days earlier against those same Dodgers. Hisashi Iwakuma threw one Aug. 12 for the Seattle Mariners. That's three in August alone. Who else?

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Oh yeah, Cole Hamels in July, when he was still with the Phillies. Max Scherzer threw one in June. That's five, who are we missing? Oh yeah, San Francisco Giants rookie Chris Heston, the least-known name on this list, who threw the first no-no of 2015 on June 9.

Point being: There have been so many no-hitters this season, it's getting hard to keep track. If you could name all six pitchers who threw one without looking it up, props to you. The no-hitter in baseball — like the outrageous Miley Cyrus awards-show outfit — just gets more and more common by the year it seems.

We're up to 30 this decade and on pace for 47 before 2020, according to Cork Gaines of Business Insider. The most in any decade in baseball history is 33, back in the pitcher-friendly 1960s. The 2010s should easily surpass that, unless commissioner Rob Manfred passes a rule next year that says pitchers have to throw half the game with their opposite hand.

The record for no-hitters in a season is eight, which happened in 1884. In the modern era, the record is seven, which happened most recently in 2012 and also in 1990 and 1991. Those records are well within reach considering how things have gone in baseball this season and these past five seasons. Here's a decade-by-decade no-hitter look from Gaines:

Why is this happening? Why are no-hitters so plentiful? Here are three reasons:

• First, offense as a whole is way down. Last year, MLB games averaged 4.07 runs, the lowest since 4.00 in 1981. This season, that number is 4.20, still significantly lower than 5.14 in 2000 and 4.59 in 2005. If this year's runs-per-game average holds, it would make 2013, 2014 and 2015 three of the four lowest totals since 1991. Some might attribute that to a "cleaner" game with fewer PEDs and perhaps that's true. But do recall that Biogenesis happened in the 2010s.

• Pitchers and defenses are more prepared than ever, which contributes to the figures above. Thanks to better analytics, data and technology, pitchers can study their opponents better and know their weaknesses. Add to this defensive shifts and alignments that take hitters' tendencies into account and you'll see why it's harder to get a hit.

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• Finally and simply: There are more teams than there were back in the '70s, '80s and '90s and thus, more games being played. For much of the '60s, there were 20 teams in MLB compared to the current 30. So the pitching then was even more dominant.

After 1968 — a year in which five no-hitters were thrown and average scoring was 3.42, an all-time low outside of the dead-ball era — MLB lowered the mound because the pitchers were just too good. They called that 1968 season "the year of the pitcher."

And now, almost 50 years later, it looks like we're living in The Decade of the No-No.

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Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at mikeozstew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz