It’s doubtful there’s anyone who saw the 1986 Mets and has watched this year’s team a fair amount who hasn’t wondered which team is better. Like all such questions, it depends exactly what you’re asking.

Who would win a single game? If Pedro Martinez is healthy, I’ll take Willie Randolph’s men. If not, my money is on Davey Johnson’s crew.

How would they do against one another in a seven game series? It’s a toss up; the 1986 team has deeper starting pitching, but the present-day model has slightly better frontline hitting and relief. It would be a close, entertaining series.

Which team would win the pennant if both were in the same league? Johnson’s Mets, and it’s not even close. They’re probably one of the five best single-season teams of all time; this year’s Mets probably aren’t one of the five best teams in baseball, and if they win the 97 games they’re on pace for they’ll be 11 short of their antecedents, even ignoring the issue of how much of their performance is due to beating up on an exceptionally weak league.

More interesting than the answer to the question is why it’s so. It sheds a lot of light on what Omar Minaya and Willie Randolph have done right this year, and what they’ve done wrong.

The first difference that jumps out is that this year’s Mets have, by far, the best player on either team. Keith Hernandez was a great player who did everything you can do on the diamond well and is renowned to this day as one of the savviest ballplayers in history and a great team leader; Carlos Beltran is a Gold Glove-caliber center fielder on pace to hit 47 home runs. The difference is immense.

The second is that the 1986 Mets were, offensively, much deeper than this year’s team, which isn’t immediately obvious. In terms of overall performance David Wright matches up well to Gary Carter, and Jose Reyes to Lenny Dykstra, but past that you start running into problems. The fourth-best player on this year’s team has probably been Jose Valentin; he’s having a miracle season but he’s not Darryl Strawberry. The fifth-best player has probably been Carlos Delgado; he doesn’t match up well with the season Mookie Wilson had in 1986.

This year’s Mets have had good offensive depth in that Valentin, Endy Chavez, and others have stepped up to fill holes in the lineup, but other than their three big stars they don’t really have anyone having even an average season, and the outfield corners have been downright weak. Only shortstop was a real hole for Johnson, and even there it was nothing like the relative black hole that left field has been for this year’s team.

I’m not sure how well this reflects on Minaya.

Coming into the season, many people were predicting that Carlos Delgado would decline, and he has; nice as his power numbers are, as many key hits as he’s had, and for the presence he lends to the ballclub, a .248 BA/.348 OBA/.493 SLG batting line with bad defense just isn’t all that great. What’s essentially happened is that Reyes has played about as well as Delgado was being counted on to play, and Delgado has played about as well as Reyes was being counted on to play — something that shouldn’t really have been counted on. Even more, when Valentin is the fourth or so best position player on the team, that’s not a good thing.

I’ve written about how this is the result of good planning and good decisions, but had Reyes not taken a great leap forward, Delgado played as well as he has, and Valentin not come out of nowhere to play at a near All-Star level, this team would not be doing nearly so well as it is — and all around, that’s a more plausible scenario than what’s actually happened.

Pretty much all of this is equally true on the pitching side. The 1986 Mets boasted three starters who were more effective than any Mets starter has been this year, and the fourth, Sid Fernandez, wouldn’t be far off the lead given his durability. And as effective as Randolph has been at pulling out-of-nowhere great performances from guys like Darren Oliver, as well as the expected performance from guys like Billy Wagner, Johnson had two excellent closers, including one, Roger McDowell, who threw 128 innings.

Again, the depth of this year’s Mets is laudable — they’ve run some bad pitchers out there, but in the aggregate the fact that they haven’t had anyone who absolutely killed them is impressive, given some of the injuries they’ve had to deal with — but nothing compared to that of their predecessors, who not only had depth, but depth of excellence.

Not being the 1986 Mets is nothing to be ashamed of, but there’s a lesson here for Minaya, albeit one he’s already probably learned, to be fair. When you look at the spots where his team is weaker — depth of above-average but not star-level positional talent, depth in the rotation — they’re areas the older team filled with young players who were either homegrown or acquired as prospects in shrewd trades. This year’s Mets might not live up to the team from 20 years ago, but with Lastings Milledge, Mike Pelfrey, and others being groomed to assume larger roles, the team they roll out two years from now just might be able to.