Quick hit on realignment

I'm sure somebody has brought this up somewhere, but I'm a little confused by the proposal for realignment, especially in the Amercian League -- or whatever the American League would become after realignment. Specifically, I'm speaking on the no-division, top 3-teams make it, 2-teams play a one game playoff proposal.

Do they really want to set up a format where the top three teams record-wise make it? Let's look at something really quickly:

• In the 9 seasons from 2002 to 2010, the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox have both finished in the top 3 a total of five times.
• In the 4 seasons in that period where they both didn't finish in the top 3, one of them did.
• In 2011, the teams with the best two records in the AL currently are: gee, the Red Sox and the Yankees.
• With the no-division format, the only year from 2002-2010 that both the Yankees and Red Sox do not make the postseason is 2006, where only the Yankees make it.

So yes, if they were running that format from 2002-2010, out of 18 chances to make the postseason outright, the Red Sox and Yankees would have made it 17 of 18 times.

I'm not going to get into East Coast biased or anything, but I will get to some common sense -- while to me it's unfair that those two teams are able to spend tons more money than everyone else in order to compete, that factor is mitigated by two things: 1) it is their money, and most importantly, 2) they have to compete within the same division with each other, playing a ton of games against one another.

Do away with the divisions, all of a sudden the thing that keeps the teams with two highest payrolls in check (and thus, the two teams with, every year, the best chance to make the postseason) will be eliminated. Sure, it's not like Red Sox/Yankees won't be a feature on the schedule, but with a fair scheduling system, they would play each other less on average.

They play a few less games against each other, then what happens? Well, they play a few more games vs. teams spending a lot less, and likely without quite as much talent...which would likely result in an extra win or two each year for those teams, and a slightly better chance to end up with a top-3 record.

C'mon, now. Who wants that?

If you want to realign, fine, but the only way a division-less format would really, really work is if baseball instituted a salary cap.