The start to Nate McLouth’s 2013 is one of the more surprising stories in the season’s opening month. The 31-year-old outfielder has a .351/.451/.486 triple-slash line and has already amassed eight stolen bases. That is a stark difference from a guy with a .251/.339/.423 career slash line who has never stolen more than 23 bases in any season. McLouth was a productive fantasy player from ages 25 to 27 before falling into a tailspin in 2010 that continued into 2012. Since landing in Baltimore, McLouth has hit .290/.373/.449 in 325 plate appearances, once again becoming a relevant fantasy option in all formats.

How has he gone from a spare part to a vital cog of a major-league offense?

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Over the weekend, I posted a brief blog post showing how many team shutouts baseball had already seen in the 2013 season. 294 baseball games have been played in the month of April and 53 of them have involved one team being shut out. If the rest of April held up at the current pace, we would have 68 shutouts by May 1st and 437 by season's end. 

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Earlier this month, Ben Lindbergh and Jon Shepard wrote an article reviewing the John Dewan rule about how spring training slugging can predict breakouts. Needless to say, the rule did not hold up well to scrutiny—and this should not come as a surprise to most people. Hot and cold performances in spring training are as predictive as Punxsutawney Phil. He did not see a shadow this February, which meant we would have an early spring. Yet, just last night, two more baseball games were snowed out, and many Midwesterners want to turn that groundhog into roadkill.

It has been just under a month since teams left Arizona and Florida to return to their respective home cities. Some players have picked up right where they left off in the Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues, for better or for worse, while others have seen their game take a complete 180. Here are some players that fall into each one of those groups (all stats as of the completion of Sunday’s games).

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Earlier today, the Mets shut out the Nationals 2-0 marking the 49th time in the young 2013 season that a baseball team has failed to score in a game. If that seems like a high number, it is. Since the league last expanded in 1998, the most amount of shutouts in a season's first full month is 52 which happened in the 2011 season. The fewest amount of shutouts happened in 2000 when there were just 29 shutouts in the first full month of that season.

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One of the early criticisms of the Towers of Power Fantasy Hours podcast was that Paul Sporer and I were too agreeable on players and topics. For those that are not aware, Paul and I have known each other since 2000, and I helped introduce him to the advanced metrics of fantasy baseball. Given the amount of baseball discussions we have had throughout the years, it is easy to understand why we are rather agreeable on most players. Unfortunately, that does not hold up when it comes to Clay Buchholz.

Buchholz is a pitcher that Paul doesn’t care for, and he loves to poke fun at the fact that I am a believer in the Red Sox’ right-hander—as evidenced by his handy artwork:

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Crazy early-season statistics can make fantasy owners do silly things. In the past week, I have heard from a few Twitter followers that have either executed or witnessed some head-scratching moves already this season.

The most recent one was a report from someone in a 12-team mixed dynasty league who dropped—yes, dropped—Norichika Aoki to pick up Trevor Bauer. The move breaks two tenets of fantasy baseball: Do not play for the future in the first two months of the season, and do not drop anyone you just drafted unless he is injured. MLB.com’s Cory Schwartz has a nice guideline for this using an inverse scale. If you draft someone in the 23^rd round, you have to keep him for at least three scoring periods; conversely, first-round picks should stay on your roster for at least 23 weeks.

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Today was a day that many teams played their sixth game of the season, meaning that opening day starters would be making their second starts of the season. That meant the likes of Justin Verlander, Jon Lester, Stephen Strasburg, Johnny Cueto, Cole Hamels, James Shields, Jeff Samardzija, and both defending Cy Young winners would be on the mound. At the end of the day, most of that group had starts they would rather forget as most of the pitchers had starts they would rather forget none more than David Price.

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Borrowing a bit from Toby Keith’s hit a few years back:

I ain't as good as I once was
I got a few years on me now
But there was a time, back in my prime
When I could really mow ‘em down

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