I'm not sure what Garvey did to win games that does not appear in the stats. I'd be interested to hear from the Garvey side specifics here, what the available stats are not accounting for. What am I, specifically, missing by looking at his stats?
As far as I can tell, Garvey's OPS numbers are more hurt by the fact that he was not good at getting on base. His power is not that great for a 1B, but it's not that bad either. His on bae is bad. .329 is straight up terrible for a player in HOF discussion. He did not walk, he hit into a lot of double plays, his power is mediocre. And he did this while he played the least important defensive position and the strongest offensive production positions.
He got a lot of hits because he hit .290-.300 and never walked. It's not really a good thing that he got a few more hits than some other guys in far more at bats. He should get some points for playing 160 games a year (consistently showing up like that certainly is a bonus to a team), but his annual hit totals are not because he was a super star contact hitter (.294), it's because he had a huge number of at bats because he player 160 games and never walked.
For many reasons, I do not trust the advanced defensive statistics to be very accurate for past players, so I will leave that out of it.
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