Bottom line to me is - if you’re not the neighborhood financially, you’re out. That can’t be said about how good of a team you have.
Of course you might also be overlooking other factors as well. Ohtani, for example, was obviously far more familiar with Southern California than he was with Toronto. Yamamoto possibly also preferred the proximity to Japan over NYC. We really don’t know of this was a bigger factor than winning, a smaller factor, or a non-factor…