Why the Giants?

No prizes for guessing which team I chose to take control of, but I guess I should explain why.

The short answer is that the Giants are awful.

The long answer is that the Giants are awful, just awful in every way and there is almost no way I could do a worse job than those who came before me.

In real life the 2007 season was a complete bust with the big deal around Barry Bonds breaking records overshadowing pretty much everything else that the Giants wanted to achieve.  A last place finish in the NL West and a .428 season would be low points not seen by the franchise since the early 80's and not seen since.

Bear that in mind when I tell you that this version of the Giants finished with a .395 record that season, bettering only the Washington Nationals in the league table and the Texas Rangers in the American League (so they didn't even pick top 2 in the draft).  Barry Bonds failed to beat Hank Aaron's home run total, falling 19 short with a paltry 2 in the season so there wasn't even that off-coloured lining.

And then it got worse...

2008 saw a dead last finish with a franchise history low .352 record, with total attendances dropping by 55% from 2,000,000 to 900,000 as a result.  2009 saw a barely noticeable improvement to .395 before three consecutive 100+ loss seasons in 2010 (.370), 2011 (.358) and 2012 (.383).  Finally 2013, this past season saw a .395 record, which equals the best of the past 7 years, and an attendance which has steadily declined to under 400,000.

Overall in seven seasons the best record was a paltry .395 record with an average of .378 leaving them rock bottom of the 30 teams by quite some margin in that time period.

The Giants cant even really claim to have drafted highly or even well either.  Seven seasons of failure have only yielded one overall #1 pick (2009) and two #3 picks (2011, 2012) and several of those first round picks have been less than successful.

I will be writing several articles covering the history of the league and the Giants that will cover this in more detail but for now it is enough to state that the Giants have been the worst overall team during the last seven seasons and have drafted poorly enough that following 6 straight top 5 picks their minor system is still only ranked 14th and behind several teams who have won world series championships in that time.