81-81 is exactly who they were, IMO the most disappointing season in Sox history and they've had quite a few of them. The foundation is there to turn things around, however, they have some questions that need to be answered during the off-season.
Top one - who's going to manage this team? Alomar Jr., Joe Girardi, Konerko, etc. etc...
Do they finally put Vaughn in his natural position at 1st base? If so does Abreu come back?
Can they finally get that outfield figured out? Jimenez in LF is scary (and not in a good way) and RF has been a carousal for years.
Can they get 2nd base figure out? Harrison was decent defensively, however, IMO they need more pop from the position.
Do they part ways with Grandal?
The questions that you raise are pretty much the same ones that Sox fans went through before LaRussa was hired. This organization had the same problems. Terrible defensive outfield "candidates". No two way second baseman. They did have good catching back then and Moncada was supposedly on his way to all-star status. Starting pitching was promising and there were young arms in the pen who were promising.
So in two year what has happened? The team has gotten worse over-all. We hired the wrong manager. The 3rd baseman went from all star
class to failure. We still don't have a good two way second baseman and outfielders. And our catchers are the worst in baseball. Meanwhile we wasted excellent starting pitching and one of the best closers in the game.
I'll say what I said a couple of years ago. The Sox need to make a couple of major trade moves. They have a lot of great talent but it is an overload in some spots and nothing in other spots. they need to take the glut of young long ball potential and good starting pitching and trade some of it for good two way outfielders and infield and catching help.
Its probably useless to speculate, though because with Reinny as the captain of the Titanic, all we will see is deck chairs being moved prior to the crash into the ice berg.
Whoever runs this team, a couple of basic things should happen outside of basic baseball and that is a complete over-haul of the team training methods and priorities. I don't think I have ever seen a group of out of shape prime of their life "athletes" break down like the White Sox bunch. In addition, the Sox should hire a manager who will make hustle a priority because clearly LaRussa didn't and let the Sox dugout look like club med and lapsed into a bunch of cliques where .500 baseball was apparently just peachy.
