Of course they will, but a team only wins with good leadership.
So you're agreeing with me then? That money isn't enough to get the Yankees a playoff spot every year from now on? Because that's what I've been saying.
Just rereading this how is a 15 team league giving the other teams an equal shot? Won't it make it harder having the Yankees and Red Sox on top of a 15 team league? They will take 2 playoff spots right off the top.
Lets say we get rid of division and just have the top 4 or five teams in the playoffs. Looking at the standings right now, Boston, New York, Cleveland, Tampa Bay, Detroit. That already knocks out the west coast teams.
The point behind creating a 15-team league with no divisions (which as I said earlier, I'm not sure is a good idea), is that it would eliminate the problem of strong or weak divisions. Toronto and Baltimore have had no chance at contending for the playoffs because they happen to be in the same division as Boston and the Yankees.
Just as an example, the Blue Jays are already eight games out of a playoff spot, despite being just under .500 and not a terrible team. The AL West has exactly one team over .500 in it. Toronto is out of the playoff race because they happen to be in the same division as the Yankees and Red Sox, but Texas might just cruise to a division title with fewer than 90 wins. The Blue Jays have been grouped into a division based on geography and they're at a disadvantage compared to many other AL teams. This is fundamentally unfair. Such things happen almost every year, but the way that Boston and New York have dominated the AL East for the last 10 years or so has created a permanent oblivion for two AL teams.
The logic behind a no-division league is that the four or five teams with the best records would automatically get in. Nobody would sneak in by winning a weak division.
But as I said, even though the idea is interesting, I'm not sure it doesn't create as many problems as it solves, such as:
1) Instead of three or four possible playoff races per league, we would only have one. It would be a race for fourth or fifth place. It's unlikely that more than two or three teams would be on the bubble in the last couple weeks of the season. While this sometimes happens already -- with a couple teams running away with their respective divisions -- in the proposed method it would happen every year.
2) Either each team's schedule would have to become balanced, or the playoff race would have the same flaw that the wild-card race currently does: since some teams play in better or weaker divisions, some teams will have an easier time getting to a win threshold than others. If the schedule becomes balanced, you probably lose attendance and ratings. Most baseball fans care about the rivalries their teams have built over the decades.
3) As many have pointed out, a 15-team league would either require teams to have off days on weekends, or there would have to be interleague games going on every weekend. The latter is far more likely, but even that seems pretty cumbersome.
Time for a little payback for round 2 dude
