Giants great Buster Posey says San Francisco’s crime, drugs perception cost them Shohei Ohtani

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It is often said that perception is reality and now the reality for the San Francisco Giants is that a certain perception of the city may have cost them Shohei Ohtani.

The Giants, along with the Toronto Blue Jays, were in the running to sign the Japanese superstar before he ultimately chose to join the Los Angeles Dodgers.

But earlier this week, Giants great Buster Posey didn’t mince words about one potential reason that Ohtani didn’t join the Bay area club.

In an interview with the Athletic, the seven-time all-star catcher didn’t mince words, saying that the perception that both crime and drugs are prevalent in San Francisco is costing the team opportunities to sign high-end free agents, like Ohtani.

“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.”

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The three-time World Series champion was involved in the pitch to recruit Ohtani and while he says the two-way superstar didn’t directly raise concerns about those issues, but among members of his camp “there was some reservation with the state of the city right now.”

The Giants brass is well aware of the issue.

In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle last year, Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi said the city can be quite polarizing due to its past.

“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.”

Ohtani signed a 10-year, $700-million contract with the Giants’ NL West rivals – so he will make plenty of visits to San Francisco over the course of it.