Buster Posey Thinks San Francisco Crime Hurts Giants’ Recruiting Pitch
San Francisco Giants legend Buster Posey shared his thoughts on why the team may have lost out on the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes to their biggest in-division rival, the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Posey is now a part of the Giants ownership group and thinks the team has been struggling to get big names in the offseason.
“Unfortunately, we’re in a bit of a free-agent slump,” Posey said. “But I believe it can turn around.”
In a recent conversation with The Athletic, Posey talked about the drug and crime problem in San Francisco having a part in the decision-making process.
“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.”
Posey was directly involved in talks with Ohtani, who received a very similar offer from the Giants to the one he eventually accepted with the Dodgers. Ohtani never mentioned the state of San Francisco, but members of his camp thought “there was some reservation with the state of the city right now.”
Even the Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi, mentioned these issues last season.
“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.“
As a Bay Area native who has lots of family ties to San Francisco, I’m glad that the Giants aren’t hiding from this issue. While many large metropolitan cities deal with crime and drug problems, the issues in San Francisco have gotten pretty bad.
I went to plenty of Giants games as a kid and remember going to postseason games during their dynasty run. Things have changed for the worse and it can be a legitimate concern for athletes who make millions of dollars to wonder if their wives and children will be safe. Of course, there are still nice parts of the city to visit, but there are also many areas I would never step foot in.
It’s sad to see the city have problems like this and I desperately hope they get solved one day. I never would have thought that it would eventually affect the team’s odds of getting free agents, but it makes sense. It should be a wake-up call that change must occur when some of the biggest stars in the sport don’t want to play in one of the league’s best ballparks and one of the country’s most famous cities.
Although the Giants didn’t get Ohtani, they were still able to sign Jung Hoo Lee yesterday to a six-year deal worth $113 million. Things aren’t all bad for the Giants, but they cannot let this free-agent problem turn into a long-term issue.
