Looking forward to the Memorial Day weekend coming up. Any big plans for anyone? What's your favorite thing to do over a 3 day weekend?

I'm going to the Chivas USA - Sounders game in LA on Saturday, which I am looking forward to. As far as I can remember, this will be the first time that I have ever been at a live game in which one of my teams was the away team. Do you remember your first experience? What do you like about going to away games compared to home games?

Summer time is just around the corner. What are your favorite summer time activities? We have discussed hiking and great trails before in these OTs, but maybe you have hit one up over the last year that you would like to suggest to all of us. Where is your favorite place to hike? What do you think are the most scenic areas in Washington/the area that you live for all of the out-of-staters?

Research, get your research here! In high school I hated doing research for most of the papers that I had to write. It took too long, and I wanted the answer right away instead of having to research it. Surprising I know. The one thing that did intrigue me was doing research with numbers. There the answers were able to be found right away. You didn’t have to look around a long time to find something intriguing, and if I could find a pattern, whoo boy was I going to be there awhile. So with the yearly whining about the Mariners being mediocre because they didn’t sign the coveted free agent, I wanted to see what the numbers bore out.

I went to look and see what the Mariners’ payroll numbers looked like compared to the rest of the league. I hopped on Baseball-Reference.com to see the payroll numbers that I could pull. The first season that they had full payroll information for all MLB teams was 1985. While I was doing my research Shipwrecked: A Peoples’ History of the Seattle Mariners came out, and I figured that a much better writer/researcher covered that topic better than I ever could. I decided to change what I was researching. What did intrigue me was looking at the payroll information that I had gathered. There were quite a few interesting things that I was noticing in the numbers. Here is a link to the spreadsheet if you would like to play around with it. Some of the things that I saw when I looked at these numbers that stuck out to me are:

• Since 1985, the average payroll has increased a little over 900%.
• During that time period, the Yankees payroll has increased a little over 1400%.
• The Mariners, though, have the biggest gap from their lowest payroll to their highest payroll during that time period, with a $4.61 million payroll in 1985 as the lowest and $117.67 million in 2008 as the highest, which is a little over a 2500% increase.
• Based on adjusted payroll, the Pirates have spent the lowest amount on their team over these seasons. Their highest payroll was $57.70 million in 2001. It amazes me that they have never topped a $60 million payroll in any season.
• Take a wild guess on who has spent the most. I’ll just tell you the total: $2.68 billion.
• Top 5 spending teams (adjusted): Yankees (ok, so I told you), Red Sox, Diamondbacks, Mets, and Dodgers. Unadjusted, it is Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, Dodgers, and Braves.
• Bottom 5 spending teams (adjusted): Padres, Royals, Marlins, Nationals, and Pirates. Unadjusted, it is Diamondbacks, Nationals, Pirates, Marlins, and Rays.
• Unadjusted, the Mariners rank 10th in spending, and adjusted, they rank 12th.
• The Mariners have the lowest payroll over these years, spending $4.61 million in 1985. The Yankees have the highest payroll over these years, spending $208.31 million in 2005.
• There have been 5 seasons where clubs have at least doubled their Opening Day payroll from the year before. The biggest jump from the Opening Day payroll one year to the next was by the Rockies, going from $10.35 million in 1993 to $23.89 million in 1994. Both the Rockies and the Diamondbacks at least doubled their payroll from their first season to their second season. The biggest jump by a club that had played more than one season is by the Blue Jays, going from $19.90 million in 1991 to $44.79 million in 1992.
• There have been 3 seasons where clubs have at least cut their payroll by half. The biggest decrease from the Opening Day payroll one year to the next was by the Marlins, going from $60.41 million in 2005 to $14.67 million in 2006. We all know about the Marlins fire sales after their World Series victories, but what I didn’t realize is that their payroll cuts came 2 to 3 years after they won not the next year. I guess I always associated their fire sales coming within that next year.

Since I did originally start this research looking at the Mariners numbers, I want to highlight some of the things that I noticed in the following spreadsheet (color coordinated to the different ownership groups):

• As you can see at the bottom, their average payroll rank is 15th, placing them right in the middle. Since Nintendo has taken over that number moves up to 12th.
• Out of the 27 seasons, 15 of them they were in the top half, 8 of them they were in the top third and 3 of them they were in the top quarter. All of these seasons have taken place over the 20 seasons of Nintendo ownership.
• In the seasons that they finished first or second in the division, their average payroll rank was 11th. In their most successful seasons (1995, 1997, 2000 and 2001) they ranked 13th, 15th, 14th and 11th in payroll, respectively.
• Since 1995, their payroll has been above the league average every season. There’s only been 2 seasons where they spent below the league average payroll since Nintendo bought the team.

Another thing that I wanted to look at was the spending of World Series winners over that time span. Here’s a table showing the highest payroll for that season along with the World Series winner and where their payroll ranks:

• The Yankees have had the top payroll in 17 seasons while winning the World Series 5 times and only 3 times have they had the highest payroll while winning it.
• There have been only 5 seasons where the team with the top payroll has won the World Series. That grows to 12 if you expand that to the teams with a top 5 payroll and 16 for teams with a top 10 payroll.
• The team with the lowest payroll rank that won the World Series was the 2003 Marlins who had the 24th highest payroll that season.

Looking at this reinforced my belief that throwing money into a team does not guarantee winning a World Series, but that it is much more about roster construction (ahem, hello 2008). We all know that the Mariners have made some big blunders with their roster moves over the years, but as this article points out, they haven’t done too badly in producing major league players (the cynic will say for other teams to poach). Put Varitek in that lineup as catcher in the middle of the Aughts, and the Mariners probably would have made a couple of more playoff appearances giving them a greater number of opportunities to make the World Series. Hopefully with the talent that GMZ has been adding we will see a swing like the early 90s Mariners had going from relative obscurity to playoff relevancy perennially. Will we ever see an offensive core that can put up career numbers like this again: Edgar .312/.418/.515, Griffey .284/.370/.538, Alex .301/.386/.566, Buhner .254/.359/.494? I certainly hope so. I don’t currently see the lineup that we have being able to get all of those, but there is certainly promise in this lineup compared to previous years.

I just purchase an iPod Touch since my photo iPod finally died.  This opens up a whole other realm of networking now for me since I know that there are quite a few LLers that have iPhones/iPod touches with games on them (mainly Words with Friends).  Since these offtops are a great place to get to know the community and network, I figured that we could share gamertags (for XBL, PS3, iPod games, etc.) to start out.  I know that there have been other places where users have shared their gamertags, but I thought that it would be nice to have them all in one spot to make it easier to find instead of having to search each individual's posts to find theirs.

Also, I will be purchasing a 360 within the next couple of weeks so any recommendations of games that I should get right away?  I definitely want to snag RDR and COD right away, but what else would you recommend, genre doesn't matter.

This is my 2nd offtop post and both times have been after a major purchase, weird!  Have you ever noticed a pattern in your behavior that was unintentional?

Welcome to all who represent the Claret and Blue!  First of all, thank you Aaron and Kirsten for starting this blog.  I'm newly assimilated into the Villan fanship, but if I know myself, I will be caught up in the team's fortunes in no time. 

Secondly, and mainly the point of this post, if you are not able to make it to Villa Park to watch the match in person, where do you like to watch it at?  At your house, at a pub surrounded by other rowdy Villan supporters, or somewhere else?  Just like the authors, I'm about 7500km from the Holte End, also.  I've only caught a few AVFC matches this season, but just as I enjoy watching my beloved Seattle Sounders play with a bunch of friends and other supporters, I know that I would like to watch Villan matches with other supporters.  I thought that in this post, we could list out Pubs (if that's your thing) that you like to watch the games at.  I know that these locations will be all over the US and England because of the diversity of the fanbase that will frequent this blog but that is what I am hoping for.  Hopefully, this list could bring some supporters together that did not know about other supporters that lived around them.   There are a couple of pubs in my area that regularly show EPL matches, like the 3 Lions Pub in Redmond, WA, but I know that there are quite a few more around here that I don't know about.

Also, if there is anything else that is on your mind, feel free to discuss.

New OT, frankly because that other one was getting really full plus I wanted to post my first OT plus I just bought a new cell phone because my screen had cracked on my current one.  I bought a white MyTouch 3G which comes with the 3.5mm headphone jack and the Swype keyboard.  I love new things because the first couple of days are full of the joys of figuring out everything in it.  Ah, the joy of discovery.  Swype seems like that it will be pretty awesome to use and hopefully once I get used to it I will be able to type at/above the 40 word a minute benchmark.

What are some recommended Android apps?  iMusic and Ringdroid were both recommended by T-Mobile.

So what has been your favorite major purchase?  What has been your most disappointing major purchase?

Also, new poll.