I think it’s fair to say the 1999 New York Mets were a better team than the 2000 club. By record alone, the 1999 squad won 97 games compared to the 94 victories amassed by the team a year later in 2000.
Regular season wins don’t always measure a team’s status in history. In 1999, the Mets ran into the Atlanta Braves in the NLCS thus losing their opportunity to play in the World Series.
One year later, they managed to avoid Atlanta and steamroll past the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals on their way to the finals.