Republicans had a brilliant plan to win Thursday night’s CQ Roll Call Congressional Baseball Game: And that plan was — gasp! — more regulation.

Sure, it was a move straight from the Democratic playbook (and let’s face it, after an 18-5 drubbing, maybe the GOP should at least try to steal signals). But the party that doesn’t believe Wall Street CEOs such as Jamie Dimon should have federal regulators all up in their business wanted to impose a new rule to curb the number of innings a single hurler could pitch in the annual charity game.

Why, you ask?

To get more people involved in the game?

To inspire more camaraderie?

To cultivate young gun talent?

Nope.

They wanted to limit the number of innings per pitcher to stop ace and all-around Democratic baseball bad-ass, Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.).

“The thing is is that you know the Democrats believe in a lot of regulations, right? Well, we came forward with a new regulation for ’em this year, but they wouldn’t agree to it. We thought there ought to be a new rule saying that you can only pitch two innings, one individual can only pitch two innings,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told your trusty HOH baseball correspondent before the first pitch. “You know, because their pitcher’s kinda good.

“So they’re only for certain regulations, but they aren’t for any regulations on baseball,” the avowed libertarian Paul continued.

Oh the hypocrisy! If only the GOP could have gotten their cross-diamond foes to agree. Richmond pitched his second consecutive complete game.