Money talks. Otherwise, why were the Yankees, with baseball's highest payroll of some $206 million, holding such a commanding lead over the Angels, with their payroll of a mere $116 million? The doomsday scenario is reasserting itself with a vengeance in the American League and maybe in all of baseball. Oh, my goodness, what if the Yankees, with all of that cable money, actually make the right decisions? The Yankees were up, three games to one, going into Game 5 of the AL Championship Series on Thursday evening, and anything was still possible, of course. The Angels are a very good team, and not cheaply constructed, either. But the Yankees have stockpiled monsters like Alex Rodriguez, C.C. Sabathia and Mark Teixeira to go along with family treasures like Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada and Andy Pettitte. 'It's like every day you're looking, somebody to your right or left, and saying, do you believe this guy? I mean, have you seen a guy like this guy? That's a handful of guys on this team,' raved A.J. Burnett, the not-inexpensive pitcher who was trying to close out the Angels on Thursday night. Money has been screaming in the postseason, what with the Phillies having sunk almost $128 million into the Ryan Howards of the world, while the Dodgers, at a mere $109 million, settled for chubby Manny Ramirez, who loves showers. (He's a nice old man, isn't he? He's very clean.) That series ended fast, four out of five, Wednesday night. In baseball's version of college basketball's Final Four, there have been no charming outsiders this time around. True, four of the six highest payrolls did not make it to the final four, including the Mets, with their second highest payroll of $139 million. (I'm not quite sure the Mets fielded a team this season. I will have to go back over my notes.) Maybe baseball got lucky in the past decade, with fresh faces like the Diamondbacks, the Angels, the Marlins, the Red Sox, the White Sox, the Tigers, the Cardinals, the Rockies, the Rays and the Phillies all getting to the World Series. But as of Thursday, baseball was in the shadow of A-Rod and his mates, playing up to their potential, which is to say, playing impressively. Maybe, to some fans, it was downright frightening, demoralizing. Rodriguez batted .375 with three homers and five runs batted in in the first four games, and virtually all of his output came in important settings. And that was only part of it. His heightened energy levels, physical and mental, are obvious to anyone in the way he runs the bases and plays third base, and even in how he rushed to guard home when Posada had momentary brain lock and left it unguarded. One of the great players in the sport has been having the October of his life. One could say this is why the Yankees hired him. But it was not just A-Rod. One could make the case that the Yankees possess at least five players -- Rodriguez, Sabathia, Teixeira, Jeter and Rivera -- who are better than the best Angel, let's say Torii Hunter, a terrific center fielder and a glowing presence who has the highest salary on the Angels at $90 million for five years. Or maybe you could throw in Burnett and Posada -- and, while you're at it, Hideki Matsui, Robinson Cano and Johnny Damon. Asked if it was almost unfair that the Yankees have accumulated such a team, Burnett said: 'No, I can't say that because it's the big leagues. Everybody's good.' Speaking of the Yankees, Burnett continued: 'But everybody's a future Hall of Famer, it seems like. Jeter's always in the right spot, he's always making his plays defensively. Alex doing what he does, and C.C. doing what he does. It's just been that way all year. It's been something new all year. It's been the whole team. It never stops.' There was still time for it to stop, or be stopped, but just exactly who was going to do that. The spreadsheet from Major League Baseball payrolls, collated by the Web site Cot's Baseball Contracts, demonstrates the huge gap between the haves and the have-nots. The Yankees have been looking like a powerhouse since midseason, when it was clear that Sabathia was the ace the team has not had since, who, Ron Guidry? Teixeira just might be the same kind of teammate and all-around player as Don Mattingly -- with power. Wow. Teixeira was slumping at 2 for 18 going into Thursday's game, yet he was shutting down the Angels with his nifty glove and feet. Asked if he felt grateful at managing a collection like this, manager Joe Girardi said, quite touchingly, that he was also blessed with a good family and a good life. Then he added: 'Oh, I think you're fortunate that you have an ownership group in the Steinbrenner family that puts together a club like this every year. They do whatever they can. They take what they earn from the club and put it in the payroll.' For much of this decade, the ever-shifting Yankees front office could not quite get it right with expensive infusions of Jason Giambi, Kevin Brown and Randy Johnson. They had the money. Things just went wrong. This year the Yankees are either awesome or scary, depending on your point of view. As Burnett was suggesting, what's fair got to do with it? 