The only thing I will say about the "advanced metrics" is that they seem to change fairly regularly. I tend to go with my eye test at at least as much: if I watched a large portion of their career and thought they were elite then, that is important to me -- maybe more so than the "advanced stats" that people tout.
I grew up with Garvey. Never really cared for him as a person but always thought he was a pretty exceptional baseball player. Same with Mattingly: I viewed him then, and still do as pretty much the same as Kirby Puckett. One is in, one is out. They played at the same time, in the same league. One was beloved by the writers (at the time) and had an injury that ended his career. One had an injury that derailed his career. Puckett had a higher career WAR because he quit when he was injured, had more SBs. He had fewer HRs, slightly fewer RBIs, etc., than Mattingly. In my view, they were pretty comparable, both then and now. I frankly think that both of them are probably questionable. But I certainly don't think one was substantially better than the other. I am sure that the current "advanced metrics" will disagree, but I don't really care, because the metrics will say something different in a few more years as they "advance" some more.
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