Re: Why aren\'t setup men paid better?
Hawkins was terrible in 01, but pretty decent in 2004 when asked to close again. He was also pretty good the second half of 2000 as a closer. "Inability to close" and "had a bad year for other reasons" are difficult to tell apart just from the statsheet, obviously, but if Hawkins really couldn't handle the pressure in 01 why was he good in 00?
We'll see about Rhodes, but I think his Cleveland year was just a fluke 40 innings. His ERA in 03 was 4.17(as a setup man) and he's getting old.
The big problem with this sort of situation is closers who perform badly turn can lose their jobs quickly, so we don't get a lot of large sample sizes of being unable to close.
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