In an offseason soggy with uncertainties both threatening and actually falling from the sky, the New York Mets on Thursday, the seventh day of January, and already wrangling with the free agents Trevor Bauer and George Springer, traded for shortstop Francisco Lindor and pitcher Carlos Carrasco.
That they are blessed with a billionaire owner with an impression to make and who was largely untouched by the pandemic-stricken, profit-sucking 2020 season — he closed on the purchase of the team in early November — made the Mets this baseball winter’s blue-and-orange fulcrum.