First came a limit on mound visits. Then, shortened breaks between innings. Next year, pitchers will be forced to face at least three batters, the better to reduce pitching changes, and some day, Major League Baseball may yet foist a pitch clock on its timeless game.

Yet as another regular season grinds to a close, MLB’s well-intentioned efforts at increasing pace of play and reducing time of game look more and more like acts of futility.

Oh, a nip here and a tuck there and the specter of penalizing players for slow play, like golf, certainly helps. But in an era where there’s a significant shortage of pitching, a hopped-up baseball and an overload of information that makes every pitch a well-litigated act, it’s nearly impossible to contain a game within a TV-friendly three-hour window.

“They want to make the game faster, but in this offensive environment, it’s not going to happen,” Washington Nationals reliever Daniel Hudson tells USA TODAY Sports. “You can kind of speed through the first four or five innings, but once you get the two bullpens in there and get into a (game-deciding) situation in the eighth or ninth inning, you want to make sure you’re on the same page as everyone around you.

“If that means I have to step off and get the signs right, or get the defense aligned, it’s just how it’s going to be.”

The average time of a nine-inning game has once again reached 3 hours and 5 minutes, equaling the mark set in 2017, when a record 6,105 home runs were hit across the major leagues.

MLB and the players’ association responded in 2018 by limiting to six the number of mound visits per game, eliminating almost all the time-sucking klatches among pitchers, catchers and infielders. And time of game ticked back down to three hours.

Before this season, mound visits were reduced to five, and innings breaks in most games to two minutes, with commissioner Rob Manfred set to unilaterally impose a three-batter minimum on relievers in 2020.

Then, the rabbit baseball reared its head again.

The Minnesota Twins broke the New York Yankees’ year-old single-season record of 267 home runs in just 135 games. Teams are hitting 1.4 homers per game compared to 1.26 in 2017, and the overall MLB mark should fall with a couple weeks to spare.

Sure, home runs are time-consuming – the trot around the bases, perhaps some pyrotechnics or a tribute to the hitter’s deity of choice as he crosses home – but decelerating the juiced ball is far from a panacea.

That won’t make hitters any less patient: They are seeing an average of 3.92 pitchers per plate appearance, the highest mark in the 21 seasons the stat has been tracked.

And that also won’t reverse a trend of high-velocity pitchers far more determined to miss bats rather than pitch to contact: The average fastball is now around 93 mph, up from 90.9 just 11 years ago.

More pitches seen. A record number of strikeouts – 8.73 per team per game, shattering last year’s mark of 8.48.

And a lot of time on the game clock before a ball's even put in play.

“It’s a direct correlation between pitching now and pitching as (recently) as five years ago,” says Miami Marlins infielder Neil Walker, in his 11th season. “Even five years ago, pitching staffs had contact guys, sinker-slider guys. They wanted the ball put into play. Now, velocities are way up, the pitching philosophies are much different – it’s pitch to the top of the zone with fastballs, with as much velocity as you hope a guy has, and put you away with breaking balls.

“You see a lot more at-bats deeper into counts, a lot more at-bats that end with strikeouts or walks, a lot more foul balls. That goes hand-in-hand with what we’re seeing in regard to time and pace of play.”

And that begs the question: How much more MLB-driven legislation can solve the problem?

While there’s a perception that the three-batter minimum will greatly reduce game times thanks to fewer mid-inning pitching changes, teams are using fewer pitchers per game this year (4.27) than last (4.36).

Adam Kolarek, a lefty who has pitched for the Dodgers and Rays this season, leads the majors with 30 appearances of two batters or less. Yet in 17 of those 30 games, he finished an inning, making it a street-legal appearance in 2020.

Manfred did not reach agreement with the union to impose a three-batter minimum, and it’s fair to wonder how many more competitive facelifts players will accept.

“I don’t like it,” says New York Mets reliever Luis Avilan, a lefty who has made 34 appearances, 30 that meet 2020’s criteria. “They should leave it the way it was, four or five years ago – the replays, the clocks, I don’t like any of it.

“They’re taking jobs away from guys. I think it’s really stupid. They should leave the baseball game the way it is. They’re talking about the game’s going to be 20 minutes quicker. I don’t think that’s going to make that big of a difference.”

Probably not.

Sure, the quick game isn’t totally dead – of the 11 nine-inning games played Monday, four ranged between 2:40 and 2:56.

And then there were Indians-White Sox and Dodgers-Rockies, nine-inning games that took 4:07 and 4:06, respectively. When they reached the league average 3:05 mark at Dodger Stadium, it was merely the bottom of the sixth.

The games ended 11-3 and 16-9, with Ian Desmond the latest position player handed mop-up duty. It should be noted that every pitcher in those games faced at least three batters.

How, then, to shorten those four-hour sagas – particularly when baseball wants more, not less, action?

“If you ask most pitchers,” says Hudson, “it’s beating a dead horse a bit to say you want all this stuff to improve the game and get young people involved and make it more exciting and have more home runs and more offense – it doesn’t correlate to fast games.

“It just doesn’t.”