Giants great Buster Posey believes city's crime rate is one of the reasons why Shohei Ohtani did not choose San Francisco

Former San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey is part of the team's ownership group. He recently spoke out on the organization losing Shohei Ohtani to divisional rival, the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Posey was very straightforward with his words and said that the crime rate in the city is a big reason why the Giants lose out on blue-chip free agents like Ohtani. He said that the city's uneasiness and even a simple perception of crime and drugs in the city, end up being a spoiler in the negotiations.

"Something I think is noteworthy, something that unfortunately keeps popping up from players and even the players’ wives is there’s a bit of an uneasiness with the city itself, as far as the state of the city, with crime, with drugs,” Posey said.

“Whether that’s all completely fair or not, perception is reality. It’s a frustrating cycle, I think, and not just with baseball. Baseball is secondary to life and the important things in life. But as far as a free-agent pursuit goes, I have seen that it does affect things.” [via The Athletic].

Posey mentioned that even though Ohtani didn't discuss the city's crime issues directly, there were some reservations concerning the state of the city among his representatives.

San Francisco Giants baseball head spoke about the issues last year

Farhan Zaidi, the Giants' head of baseball operations, recognized difficulties with how players perceive the city in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle last year.

“I don’t know if we would say San Francisco is an idiosyncratic market, but I do think maybe it is more that way than it was 20 years ago,” Zaidi said.

“I think it’s a little bit of a polarizing place among players in terms of the desire to play there. This is sort of totally independent of the competitive situation, but geography, politics, whatever.

"When we’re doing our research on free agents and we find that players aren’t really that happy even coming into town for a three-game series, they’re probably not going to be that excited to play there for a long time."

It remains to be seen how the Giants project themselves as a safe destination in the coming years and again field a star studded roster.