Early May Strikeout Rates for Starting Pitchers: the Top 100

According to some research done over at Baseball Prospectus, strikeout rate stabilizes for pitchers around 70 batters faced. Now the first week into May, most starting pitchers have crossed into that threshold. Here is a look at the top 100 starting pitchers in strikeout rate as of May 2 and their differentials from last season:

I have beat the Matt Harvey will shove in 2016 drum on this website, and I have to say, I'm shocked at how poorly he's looked so far. My best explanation is that his blood clot issue that popped up at the end of spring training has affected him physically, because his stuff looked incredible when I was down in Florida in early March. His command has not been good in the regular season, and his slider is down about 1.5 mph from last season and looks nothing like it did in early spring. I still expect good things from him at some point, but it might take a while for him to get settled down. I don't think last year's workload is causing the problems this year because of how electric he looked in early March.

Noah Syndergaard has increased his K% dramatically on the back of a hard slider, which added about 3 mph in velocity from last season. He is also using it consistently, where he only used it occasionally last season. He's also gained some more velocity on his fastball.

Rick Porcello is not really generating more swinging strikes, but he's getting more of them with two strikes, and he's throwing more pitches inside the zone.

Rich Hill is mysterious and magical and is maintaining his high K% from last season. Hitters don't seem to pick up his fastball well and have a hard time separating it from his curve.

Vincent Velasquez has exploded onto the scene with mid 90s fastball and a sharp curve, and flashes a good change up, too. He appears to have some deception, because hitters have routinely taken awful swings at his fastball.

Nate Eovaldi has made the splitter a key part of his repertoire, which he added in the second half of last season, and that's helped him increase his strikeout rate.

Matt Moore has always had a lot of talent, and appears to be putting things together. He's generating more swings and misses, although his first pitch strike rate is well below average, which is something to keep an eye on for sustainability.

Chris Sale's strikeout rate has gone down along with his swinging strikes, but he's limiting line drives and generating good trajectories, and is still pitching at a high level.

David Price has sparkling DIPS metrics like FIP and xFIP, but the contact he's allowing is below average. He's giving up line drives at a near 30% rate, not generating many pop ups, and has a below average avg exit velocity against.