Everyone makes mistakes. Fortunately, those made by baseball columnists are almost without exception completely insignificant. It’s perhaps not fundamentally unfair that bad calls made by general managers and players haunt them forever, while those made by the people who write about them don’t – after all, the consequences of a bad trade or free agent signing can involve tens of millions of dollars.

Still, former Mets General Manager Jim Duquette will no doubt be getting yelled at in supermarket checkout lines 10 years from now thanks to last year’s Scott Kazmir trade. The least those of us who criticized the deal at the time can do is admit that Victor Zambrano has turned out to be a lot more useful than we expected.

With the season halfway over, I thought it would be worthwhile to go back and re-examine my preseason predictions, with an eye toward those I just got wrong. It took no special insight to predict that the Mets would be fringe contenders, or that the Yankees were headed full speed toward a collapse. Picking the Washington Nationals to lose 90 games and the Chicago Cubs to win the NL Central, on the other hand, did take special insight, though not the sort I should boast about at parties.

Probably my biggest blind spot was for the Chicago White Sox, who have by far the best record in the American League. I pegged them to win 79 games, proposed that manager Ozzie Guillen’s plan to win with speed and defense in one of the game’s best hitter’s parks made him seem like an agent of the Cubs, and noted that with a variety of surly cranks on the roster, the club might be most entertaining for the headlines it generated.

As it turned, I was correct in my main criticism of the White Sox, which was that the team’s off-season moves greatly weakened the offense. Taking park effects into account, the Sox’s offense is in the bottom third of the league. What I missed was that the team’s vocal commitment to speed and defense wasn’t the usual boilerplate, but a well-designed and well-executed strategy to fortify the pitching by strengthening the defense.

I should have recognized that the Sox had four exceptionally durable starting pitchers who put the ball in play, all of them the type who would disproportionately benefit from the strong defense of new Sox like Scott Podsednik, Jermaine Dye, and Tadahito Iguchi. I also underestimated the strength of the team’s bullpen. In retrospect, there was no reason to be so dismissive of the Southsiders.

After the White Sox, my next biggest miss was the Cardinals. This may simply have been a case of contrarianism. Among other contentions, I proffered that shortstop David Eckstein and catcher Yadier Molina would not prove adequate replacements for departed Redbirds Edgar Renteria and Mike Matheny, and that several of the team’s starting pitchers would be much worse than they were last year, in part because of Matheny’s departure. Adding in health woes for Scott Rolen, I figured the Cardinals for a second-place ballclub, behind the Cubs.

The Cardinals, of course, have the best record in the National League, in large part because of excellent pitching. Chris Carpenter has become the true ace so many thought he would be a decade ago when he was coming up in the Toronto system. Much like Blue Jays ace Roy Halladay, who came up around the same time, he’s ridden a commitment to working quickly, throwing his fastball for strikes, and pitching to contact. With a 12-4 record, a 2.60 ERA, and 121 1 /3 innings pitched, Carpenter is a Cy Young candidate.

Others, like Matt Morris (9-1, 3.31), Jeff Suppan (7-7, 4.34), and Jason Marquis (8-6, 4.11), have pitched as well as or better than they did a year ago. I put too much emphasis on Matheny’s departure – while he’s an excellent receiver, if the Cardinals didn’t think Molina was ready to handle the staff, they would have retained Matheny or picked up another veteran. In retrospect, the Cardinals were clearly the best team in the league going into the season, and I should have seen that.

After the White Sox and Cardinals, my biggest miss was predicting that the Nationals would lose 92 games. I called the team a “disaster” and pointed to the presence of mediocre veterans Cristian Guzman and Vinny Castilla on the left side of the infield as proof that the team was going nowhere. As it happens, Guzman has been the worst player in the league, with a Womackian .201 BA/.240 OBA/.291 SLG batting line and poor defense, while Castilla’s SLG of .407 highlights his contributions.

But the Nationals had quite a lot going for them coming into this season, not least a genuine ace in Livan Hernandez, a great deal of young offensive talent, and a superb manager in Frank Robinson, who has consistently gotten more out of his players than would seem possible. I gave too much weight to the team’s relative lack of depth, and not enough to its star power and management.

In each of these three cases, personal prejudices blinded me to what I now see were obvious strengths – in the Sox’ case, my skepticism of team makeovers that emphasize speed and defense at the expense of offense; in the Cardinals’ case, my belief that a veteran catcher is a crucial component of a winning team; and in the Nationals’ case, my belief that reliance on declining veteran infielders can cripple an otherwise strong team. In the first two cases, I was just wrong, as aspects of the Sox and Cardinals I pointed to as flaws are real strengths. In the Nationals’ case, I was right on a small point but wrong on more important ones, and I strongly doubt the weak play of Guzman and Castilla will cost them the division.

I would hold that all these principles are generally sound, but in no case do any of them constitute a litmus test for whether or not a team can be expected to be any good, and I really should not have treated them as such. Thankfully, at least I can get a quart of milk without someone yelling at me for underestimating the White Sox.