The thing about LaTroy Hawkins is this. He is not a closer. He is a setup man. He was brought to the Cubs to setup for Joe Borowski. But Joe went down early in the season due to injury. Then they thrust LaTroy into that closer role and sometimes he's done good and a lot of times not so good. But it's not his true role. You look at the better closers in this game and they are older pitchers. LaTroy just is not there yet. Close but not quite.
However, the Cubs management had the entire season to shop for a closer and they never did. I don't know why because it was one of their main problems the whole year. I know getting Nomar was a good move but they had more than enough talent to go after a decent closer. Anyone would have helped.
In the end what really screwed the Cubs was their lack of clutch hitting and bullpen. They always, always, always, always put themselves in a fantastic position to win games but rarely got the big hit in many key series' to break a game wide open.
That and their lack of a solid closer. There were other things that doomed the team like injuries, poor attitudes on some ballplayers, and some dumb coaching from Baker and Wav'in Wendell Kim the 3rd base coach.
All in all it just was not their year...again. They had their chances but could never quite seal the deal.
