Stats in a freeform RP should be only ever used as bare information or ways to quickly resolve situations like "who's stronger".
I personally run mecha RPs where you had stats and I even gave people a rough idea what kind of differences they show. Then I also told the players that while stat differences could be big you can bridge it if you write out a scene well.
Basically I treated it as a "difficulty level" when writing a fight. You could've breached the armor of an extremely tough machine but it took effort and likely abusing its weakpoints. Meanwhile when your stats are greater you could've practically handled a low threat situation with one or a few sentences.
That was my idea on the thing. Execution was admittedly a bit different but things pretty much worked out in the end.