As we enter the All-Star Break, let’s review the first “half” of the Cardinals’ season. The Cardinals shot out of the gate, going 18-8 to begin the season. In going 10 games above .500, they build a five-game lead on their nearest central-division competitor. They slumped a bit in early May, but by June 5 had re-summitted the 10-games-above-.500 mark. In the meantime, however, the Reds had caught fire and were only one game behind, as the following graph shows:

After their series-ending win in Houston Sunday, the Cardinals now sit in the same place they were back on April 27 — six games above .500. Yet, because of the Reds’ strong play, the Cardinals now find themselves looking up in the standings.

In addition to the Reds’ streaking, the Cardinals have run into some bad “luck.” They’ve been running a gap between their actual winning percentage and their Pythagorean winning percentage since the beginning of May:

The roster size of baseball’s All-Star teams has grown 21% over the last 13 years. In 1997, each squad had 28 players; this year, each will have 34. That represents an increase in the percentage of all-stars of the total player pool, now at a 13-year-high of 9.1%; the only time in the period when it did not also increase the percentage was in 1998, when the total number of teams, and therefore players, also increased.

Blogger Peter Hjort at Capitol Avenue Club yesterday tweeted what many baseball fans have been feeling: “My opinion of the hot stove season thus far: ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ…” Indeed, the activity on the MLB transaction wire has so far consisted mostly of outrightings and DL activations, with only two trades and a handful of minor signings.

So is the 2009 offseason destined to be lame, or have we simply not waited long enough? Let’s look at the free-agent signings and players traded since 2000 to see where the spikes in activity have historically been (courtesy of Retrosheet).

Happily for fans, the best is yet to be. The hot stove league is due to heat up soon, if the recent past is any indication. Come next Monday, December 7 — the last day for free agents offered salary arbitration to accept the offers — expect the bell to ring and action on the trading floor to commence. That day has traditionally been the day with the most bustle. And although the Winter Meetings may not be what they used to be, business still gets done during that week or the week after. The next burst of transactions occurs the week before Christmas, so make sure to send your wish list to Jolly John Mozeliak in time. We’ll likely see one more flash of activity in mid-January, then slowly decline toward that most pleasant of baseball holidays, Pitchers and Catchers Report Day.

Judging by ERA, Seattle’s Erik Bedard (2.82) and Los Angeles’s Randy Wolf (3.23) would appear to have had the best seasons of this winter’s crop of free-agent starting pitchers (min. 70 IP). But did they?

Expected Fielding Independent Pitching (xFIP) tells another story. By its lights, Rich Harden (3.70) and the Cardinals’ Joel Pineiro (3.76) were best. Sometimes, the disparity between ERA, which includes a lot of defense and “luck” noise, and xFIP is great. The following chart shows today’s free-agent starters in increasing order of the positive difference between their ERA and xFIP.

With that 2.82 ERA but a 3.92 xFIP, Bedard was the biggest beneficiary of ERA, while John Smoltz was the most “unlucky.” Note that just because a pitcher was “lucky,” it doesn’t mean that he was bad: Todd Wellemeyer, with a positive difference in ERA-xFIP (0.59) and high xFIP (5.30, shown on the blue line), is an apt example.

Total win-probability added for players in the 2009 National League Championship Series (data from Fangraphs).

Here’s a game-by-game look:

Howard was a deserving, if commonsense, pick for series MVP.