Welcome back to Pitcher Power Rankings! I haven’t done this exercise in the context of an article in quite some time (though I have been putting the leaderboard on Twitter periodically). The end of April, the season’s first full month, seemed a logical time to restart this article series.
To describe how this works, Pitcher Power Rankings is a formulaic ranking of every pitcher to appear in the 2023 season. Starting pitchers and relief pitchers, as well as those in a swing role, are all ranked together. These rankings are based only on performance in the 2023 season, not performance in prior years, and not projected 2023 performance going forward.
The formula used consists of park-adjusted run prevention and estimated run prevention metrics, as well as faster stabilizing pitch-by-pitch data, and volume of innings. The formula’s results are converted to a Score scale where 100.0 is a perfect Score, with the top pitcher for a full season usually posting a Score between 75.0 and 85.0.
Author’s Note: All statistics entering play on 1 May.
| Rank | Name | Team | Score | 2022 Rank |
| 1 | Zac Gallen | ARI | 76.4 | 15 |
| 2 | Gerrit Cole | NYY | 70.2 | 11 |
| 3 | Spencer Strider | ATL | 65.4 | 12 |
| 4 | Kevin Gausman | TOR | 64.9 | 14 |
| 5 | Jacob deGrom | TEX | 64.2 | 50 |
| 6 | Sonny Gray | MIN | 63.7 | 59 |
| 7 | Clayton Kershaw | LAD | 63.5 | 18 |
| 8 | Shane McClanahan | TBR | 54.6 | 7 |
| 9 | Luis Castillo | SEA | 52.5 | 32 |
| 10 | Nathan Eovaldi | TEX | 52.0 | 149 |
| 11 | Shohei Ohtani | LAA | 50.6 | 4 |
| 12 | Justin Steele | CHC | 47.3 | 74 |
| 13 | Joe Ryan | MIN | 44.7 | 108 |
| 14 | Hunter Brown | HOU | 43.1 | 237 |
| 15 | Jeffrey Springs | TBR | 41.6 | 33 |
| 16 | Logan Webb | SFG | 41.1 | 16 |
| 17 | Pablo López | MIN | 40.8 | 43 |
| 18 | Eduardo Rodriguez | DET | 40.7 | 445 |
| 19 | Zack Wheeler | PHI | 40.5 | 25 |
| 20 | Framber Valdez | HOU | 40.3 | 13 |
| 21 | Alex Cobb | SFG | 39.8 | 31 |
| 22 | Hunter Greene | CIN | 38.6 | 112 |
| 23 | Matt Strahm | PHI | 36.8 | 253 |
| 24 | Jordan Montgomery | STL | 36.7 | 42 |
| 25 | Mitch Keller | PIT | 36.3 | 143 |
| 26 | José Alvarado | PHI | 36.2 | 99 |
| 27 | Marcus Stroman | CHC | 35.9 | 64 |
| 28 | MacKenzie Gore | WSN | 34.9 | 429 |
| 29 | Max Fried | ATL | 34.6 | 9 |
| 30 | Alex Young | CIN | 34.3 | 293 |
