Time waits for no man, except if you’re a big league baseball player. Baseball’s untimed nature is part of its essence and charm. It is a timeless game sans time limits passed down from generation to generation like a family heirloom.

The game is measured in balls and strikes and innings and outs, not minutes and seconds. It can take 2½ hours to play nine innings one day and four hours the next, glorious incongruity.

But even the most timeless of sports has to change with the times. The untimed national pastime and its 162-game season are a bit too time-consuming for an era when attention spans are shorter and entertainment options are copious and individually tailored. The in-between-pitch performance art of players adjusting, contemplating, fidgeting, and procrastinating has to go. Major League Baseball knows this. That’s why a sport without a game clock is fixated on shaving minutes and seconds anywhere it can — between innings, between pitches, between mound visits.

Pace of play is a greater existential threat to the popularity of the sport than hissing at bat flips and huffing about on-field flamboyance.

With the advent of on-demand television, DVRs, and streaming services, consumers now consume entertainment on their time.

“I would say we’re in a very competitive environment for eyeballs. Whether people are watching on television or going to the ballpark, it’s critical that we address this pace of game issue as soon as possible,’’ said Red Sox chairman Tom Werner, one of the foremost advocates for improved pace of play and a member of MLB’s competition committee.

“I think the rhythms of society dictate that; attention spans are shorter. There is by all measures some dead time in a baseball game. We need to make adjustments.’’

Religiously watching your favorite team takes dedication and Adderall. The national pastime can dawdle on past your bedtime with its built-in downtime.

The last time the average MLB time of game for a season was less than 2 hours and 45 minutes was 1986 (2 hours and 44 minutes).

The Red Sox have played the longest nine-inning game this season, a 12-8 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays on April 21 that took 4 hours and 16 minutes. Entering Saturday, the Sox’ average time of game was 3 hours and 15 minutes, the second-longest in baseball.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred expressed his displeasure last week that, a year after baseball implemented some pace-of-play measures such as demanding batters keep one foot in the batter’s box at all times, the average time of game had increased in 2016.

Last season, baseball trimmed its average time of game to 2 hours, 56 minutes, 14 seconds, down from a high of 3 hours, 2 minutes, 21 seconds in 2014. But through Thursday’s games, the average time of game had risen to 2:59:48, according to MLB.

The numbers are up despite the implementation of more time-saving measures this season. MLB put a 30-second time limit on mound visits by pitching coaches and managers. The time between innings was truncated by 20 seconds to 2 minutes, 5 seconds and 2:25 for nationally televised games.

It’s obvious some of the regression is due to the lax application of the rules instituted last season. Batters have reverted to treating between pitches like they’re reading the greens at Augusta National.

“Pace of game is an issue that requires constant vigilance and focus,’’ said Manfred on Thursday. “I think we did a really nice job the first half of last year having focus. Hats off to our players. They were 100 percent cooperative. But as is often the case, as you get deeper into the season you lose focus a little bit. We’re not happy with the early returns this year. We’ve made some ongoing efforts to regain that focus.’’

Last Tuesday featured a season-best average game time of 2 hours and 47 minutes.

Baseball faces a tough balancing act between trying to conform to an insta-everything culture and eroding the integrity and spirit of the sport.

In a world full of pithy sound bites and 140-character context, baseball remains a comforting colloquy. It needs to follow the advice of legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden: “Be quick, but don’t hurry.’’

To do this, baseball is going to have to put down its pearls and put on some yoga pants, less reflexive rigidity and more flexibility.

Manfred, Werner, who understands catering to internal entertainment clocks as a television producer, and other MLB powerbrokers have shown a willingness to make changes.

According to ESPN, MLB’s competition committee recommended an automatic intentional walk, abolishing the need for a pitcher to throw four intentional balls.

Werner has been a proponent of the 20-second pitch clock, which MLB experimented with in the Arizona Fall League in 2014 and implemented at the Double A and Triple A levels in 2015.

And now that baseball has put a time limit on the visits to the mound by a pitching coach and a manager, how about limiting how many visits a team can make that don’t result in a pitching change? These visits amount to infield gatherings. Other sports limit team timeouts.

“Obviously, it’s important that the players be our partners on this, but we need to keep the pressure on as a committee to make sure that the length of game will be shorter in the future,’’ said Werner.

Of course, while rules evolution can shorten games, it can also elongate them. There is no greater game-stopper than instant replay.

Through Thursday, MLB said there had been 380 replay reviews in 610 games with an average time of 1 minute and 48 seconds.

That’s reasonable, but there are still some reviews that last longer than the last “The Lord of the Rings’’ movie.

It’s going to take time to turn baseball culture into a less time-consuming one.

But time is not on baseball’s side anymore.

Christopher L. Gasper can be reached at cgasper@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @cgasper.