Martin Prado

It sounds funny, doesn't it?

Chase Utley is being challenged for the starting job at second base for this year’s National League All-Star team.

Up until this year, that was a preposterous thought, but seemingly out of the woodwork.

It's been a while since Atlanta Braves fans have had much to cheer about. Long gone are the days of Maddox, Glavine, and Smoltz, the Jones boys broke up after 2007, the streak of 14 consecutive NL East Championships ended five seasons ago, and the 1995 World Series is but a distant memory.

We all knew that their reign atop the NL East couldn’t last forever.

There are certain players in baseball who have been fantasy studs over the first month and a half of the season that would help any team. At the same time, there are players who have overperformed and are bound to come back to life.

In this list, I will point to five players who have been fantasy stars so far and helped your team win that are not going to be able to hold up this level of production throughout the season. I will also list five players who's skills at the plate or on the mound does not transition well to the fantasy game.

Scott Podsednik batting .457 and on pace to steal 94 bases? A fluke.

Livan Hernandez’s 16 scoreless innings and 2-0 record? A fluke.

The Pirates’ 7-5 record? Definitely a fluke.

However, there are some other early season trends around baseball that are more than just a stroke of good luck. Let’s take a look at Five Early MLB Trends that are No Fluke.

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For those of you who drafted Martin Prado, or at the very least picked him up off the waiver wire, you’ve got to be happy with his current hot streak—and 14 game hitting streak—despite the streak coming to an end Saturday night thanks largely in part to Ubaldo Jimenez’s no hitter.

But as with any hot player in fantasy baseball, the trendy question is always whether or not the player is the real deal, or just another popular flare up.

The Atlanta Braves are 10 games into the season, and they sit at 6-4 after winning their first game against the Rockies.

Here are some thoughts from the first week and a half of the year.

Martin Prado Keeps Hitting

Prado has been a hit machine thus far. At the beginning of the season, you could count me among those skeptical that Prado was as good as he showed us in 2009.

Thus far into the season, the Braves have continued their offensive woes from the run-challenged 2009 summer.

Only Martin Prado, Brian McCann, and Jason Heyward have been better than league average.

Those three have been more than impressive, but the lack of production from the rest of the lineup is starting to be a concern. While nine games is not an appropriate sample size, the team should be hitting better than they currently are.

Let's take a look at the production of the three aforementioned players compared to the rest of the team.