I'm not arguing "there aren't enough players overlapping championship teams" -- to me, the central question that underlies a lot of this is whether or not the Red Sox are "behind" in terms of retaining core talent and/or building a central group of players that can be broadly marketed to a variety of different flavors of fans, even in seasons where the team isn't an obvious WS contender. While not directly related, I think this parallels the question of "what is the off-field benefit from developing marketable stars and how do you reconcile that with raw, cold, on-field optimization?"
Interestingly, a *lot* of the pieces (e.g., The Athletic, FG, etc.) about the $700M Ohtani signing have focused on the potential for "non-quantifiable" value he brings in terms of eyeballs, marketing, local fan goodwill, tourism, etc. as at least partial justification for the price tag. It's apparent that the teams in the SO sweepstakes essentially worked with two numbers in mind: the "on-field value" and the nebulous "superstar effect" for a big market team. I would be lying if I said I wasn't concerned that the Sox approach was behind the curve here.