Major League Baseball Stats From 2015 Regular Season

NEW YORK (AP) — Major League Baseball has managed to cut six minutes from the average time of a nine-inning game this season, when it adopted some speedup rules.

STATS said Monday that the season average ended at 2 hours, 56 minutes. While the average dropped to 2:53 in the first half of the season, it was back at 3:00 after the All-Star break. MLB and the players' association agreed this year to enforce the rule requiring a hitter to keep at least one foot in the batter's box in many cases, and they also agreed to post stadium clocks timing pitching changes and between-inning breaks.

Triple-A and Double-A leagues, the highest levels of the minors, used 20-second pitch clocks and started penalizing violators with balls and strikes. At Triple-A, the International League average dropped 16 minutes to 2:40 and the Pacific Coast League fell 13 minutes to 2:45.

Some more stats:

Cincinnati reliever Aroldis Chapman threw the 62 fastest pitches in the big leagues this season, according to Major League Baseball's new Statcast computer system. Chapman's fastest pitches ranged from 103.92 mph to 102.36 mph, MLB said after Sunday's regular-season finales. His fastest was fouled off by Minnesota's Brian Dozier on June 29.

Nathan Eovaldi of the New York Yankees had the 63rd-fastest pitch at 102.35 mph, which Dozier took for a ball on Aug. 19. Chapman had the highest average velocity for his fastball at 99.98 mph, followed by Miami's Erik Cordier (98.39), Kansas City's Kelvin Herrera (98.37), St. Louis' Trevor Rosenthal (98.35) and Pittsburgh's Arquimedes Caminero (98.25).

Kansas City's Yordano Ventura had the highest velocity among starting pitchers who qualified for the ERA title at 96.79 mph. The Cardinals' Carlos Martinez was next at 96.36 mph, followed by the New York Mets' Matt Harvey (96.18), Chis Sale of the Chicago White Sox (96.14) and Pittsburgh's Gerrit Cole (95.98).

Kris Bryant of the Chicago Cubs hit the longest home run, a 495-foot drive off Arizona's Rubby De La Rosa at Wrigley Field on Sept. 6. Washington's Michael Taylor was second with a 492-footer against Colorado's Yohan Flande at Coors Field on Aug. 20. The distance is what the ball would have traveled had it landed at field level.

Miami's Giancarlo Stanton had the three highest launch speeds of balls off the bat, ranging from 120.3 mph to 119.2 mph.