San Francisco Giants great Buster Posey provided a sober revelation after the organization lost out on Shohei Ohtani to the rival Dodgers.

Posey, who made seven All-Star teams and won three World Series as Giants catcher, is now a part of the franchise’s ownership group.

He spoke to The Athletic this week and stated directly that crime and drugs in San Francisco — or at least the perception that both are pervasive — are affecting the team in pursuit of blue-chip free agents in general and even Ohtani specifically.

“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 acknowledged.

“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, who was involved in the Ohtani recruitment, said that the Japanese phenom did not raise these issues directly but that amongst members of his camp “there was some reservation with the state of the city right now.”

Last year, in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi acknowledged issues with how players perceive the city.

“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.

This is not to say that the Giants will never be able to land any players — they just signed Korean star Jung Hoo Lee to a six-year, $113 million contract — but as tie goes to the runner in baseball, the tie may go to cities without reputed disorder in the pursuit of elite free agents.