Mike Celizic

You’ll still hear people who never cared for Alex Rodriguez say that every team he left got better and no team he played for ever won a World Series. And that’s just plain nonsense.

Sure, the Mariners had their best year ever after A-Rod left, but they didn’t win the World Series or even get to it — and they’re dead last in the AL West this year. And the Rangers got better last year after he left, but they’re only slightly better than the Mariners this year, hovering right around .500.

As for the Yankees, three years went by without a World Series win before A-Rod arrived and one has passed with him aboard. And this year, it’s possible that the Yanks won’t even make the playoffs.

It won’t help A-Rod’s reputation if the unthinkable happens to the most expensive team in the history of American sports. Despite a stat sheet brimming with gaudy statistics, he’ll still be a great player who never won a championship.

That, some would say, would be further proof of the A-Rod Effect. It’s sheer lunacy, but it’s also, like Intelligent Design, something that can’t be disproved.

If you’ve been paying attention this year, you’d know that without A-Rod, the Yankees wouldn’t have won the AL East. Without him, they wouldn’t have been in any race at all.

That’s why Yankees fans, who weren’t totally convinced of A-Rod’s greatness last year, have no such quibbles this season. Not after he hit 48 home runs to win his fourth home run title in the last five years.

This is the A-Rod the Yankees traded for last year. And if you want to argue that he’s not the best player in the game, go ahead and make your case for Albert Pujols or someone else, but you’ll just be splitting hairs. If he’s not the best, he’s so close that it makes no real difference.

ALDS: Yankees vs. Indians Indians win series 3-1 Sizemore, Indians send Yankees packing Celizic: Plenty to blame in the Bronx End of an era for Torre?  |  A-Rod, too? Is Clemens done?  |  Limping into the sunset iPredict: Clemens to retire  |  Who wants him? Schedule, results, more

That said, there’s still a hole in the résumé of the American League’s greatest player over the past decade, and the game’s second greatest to Barry Bonds. It’s the number of championships he’s won, which remains stuck at the same number Ernie Banks won — zero.

But A-Rod has been to the playoffs, a destination Banks never reached. Rodriguez was with Seattle for three postseasons, including 1995, when he came up late in the year and didn’t figure in the two series the Mariners played — a win over the Yankees and a loss to Cleveland. The Mariners returned in 1997 and 2000, losing to Baltimore in ’97 and beating the White Sox before losing to New York in ’00.

And last year, he was part of the Yankee team that blew a 3-0 lead in the ALCS to Boston. The A-Rod bashers will point out that after hitting well in every previous series he had played in, he hit just .258 in the Boston series last year. When the Yankees needed someone to carry them for just one out of the final four games, he was nowhere to be found.

Slide show   The Week in Sports Pictures The Giants on top of the football world, getting ready for the London Olympics and more. more photos

It’s an observation that is true enough but also misleading. While A-Rod disappeared during the nightmare of those four straight losses, so did almost every other Yankee, including Mariano Rivera, who chose that time to momentarily forget how to close out ballgames.

Yes, A-Rod could have saved them. But if the team had just played its normal game, he wouldn’t have needed to.

Or, if Rivera could have saved just one game, he also wouldn’t have needed to.

But the team went into a slump and Rivera blew up and A-Rod needed to ride to the rescue. It may not be fair, but you can’t blame fans for expecting the guy making the most money to contribute the biggest hits.

The reality is that pitching wins championships, and the Yankees don’t have enough of that quantity.