Well he also got injured at age 31 going from 5 consecutive 40 home run seasons to only breaking 20 one more time in his career, and he never played a full season again after that, and not at the level he had previously enjoyed. When you don't top 400 AB's in a season for half your career it does put a damper on your numbers. In his prime I don't think the comparison to Mantle and Mays was as egregious as it is now, looking back at their careers in total. He had three years with an OPS of over 1.000 and a 4th at .997 before he got hurt. the number of guys who have done that is pretty small. Again his career .900+ ops is pretty damn rare and was only drug down that far by him being a shadow of his former self, but where it really hurt him is in the counting numbers.
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