I don’t know if it’s that odd really. If your goal is to win the cup, and I could choose between a player who is a 100/100 for 3 years, 85 for 7, and a 75 for another 5, or a player who is a 95 for 10, and 60 for another 5, I think I might choose the second player.
You get 10 years of a player near the best in the league to build around rather than 3 years at the top then 7 as a star. And after that, both aren’t good enough to build around anyway. But, on power, the first player has the better peak and the better career.
Not that I think those ratings fit these two players, it’s just an example, but I think there’s a lot of things to consider in player comparisons and ultimately there’s too many variables to come up with a perfect algorithm to account for them all on paper. So sometimes what might seem like twisting and contorting is really just those variables coming into play.