It sounds like the Mets are doing exactly the same thing I’m doing: Scrambling to tie up a bunch of loose ends before heading down to Spring Training.

They’ve restructured their scouting department under J.P. Ricciardi. Andy Martino has more, but the crux of it is that instead of assigning scouts to levels and/or regions, they’re assigning them to comprehensively scout other organizations, top to bottom. Pro scouts will be responsible for three organizations each.

They’ve brought back lefty Casey Fossum, who pitched in Japan last year. Fossum is probably best remembered as that guy I kept drafting to fantasy teams in the middle part of the last decade hoping he’d figure out how to turn his Nintendo pitches into Major League success. He never did, and though he’s way better against lefties than righties, his Major League lines against lefty hitters probably are not good enough to play for a lefty specialist. Still, most of his Major League work has come out of the rotation, so perhaps in a strictly relief role he could flummox Ryan Howard often enough to deserve a roster spot.

And they’ve signed a dude named Dale Thayer to a Minor League deal without inviting him to Major League camp. Matt Cerrone predicted I would welcome Thayer because of his sweet mustache, and he’s absolutely right. It is a sweet mustache, so I do welcome Thayer. Plus Thayer reportedly throws in the low 90s and has been a good reliever at every Minor League stop — though he’s 30 now and has always been old for his level.

I’m never clear on why certain guys get invited to Major League camp and others don’t. Since Thayer pitched in the Majors last year (however briefly) he seems like he should have been at least invited to hang out with the big-leaguers for a little while, but then I guess the decisions could easily have as much to do with the number of available lockers as it does with Thayer’s ability.

“Sometimes there’s not a lot to do,” the third baseman said. “I’ve picked up the bowling ball a few times this offseason, especially once I heard we’re going to have this league. I don’t want to be surprised by anything. So I practiced a little bit and I think I’m ready to go.”

Wright originally was coy about what he can bowl, but then offered: “I think it’s just the same with my baseball — just a lot of inconsistencies. Every once in a while I’ll creep up around 200. I can also bowl a 120 or 130. Just like baseball, I think it’s kind of parallel. I need to find some consistency in baseball, find some consistency in bowling.”

– Adam Rubin, ESPN.com.

Maybe I’m just desperate for any little bit of baseball news, but there’s a lot to love in the quotes from Wright.

First and foremost, that’s about my same bowling range, though I don’t bowl that often. That means if I ever had the opportunity and things were falling my way, there’s actually some sport I might beat David Wright at.

Second, it’s hilarious and completely predictable that Wright, upon learning that the Mets would have a team bowling league this season, would practice for it. And it’s going to be especially funny when Wright strikes out the first time in Spring Training and some small but vocal group of morons asserts he should have spent more of his offseason watching game film and less of it bowling.

Also, and most interestingly — paging Seth Samuels — Wright here acknowledges his inconsistency. That’s not groundbreaking for a ballplayer (players speak of the need to achieve consistency all the damn time), but it feels at least mildly notable given how frequently Wright’s streakiness has been discussed this offseason.

On my drive home from DC yesterday I had a doozy of a blog post swimming around in my head. It aimed to detail the trip itself, with the determined pace of the cars on the road and the Packers and Steelers flags flying from side-view mirrors, and suggest that the road made for a better pregame show than any of the slick-suited barking on television. It was to contain the line “the air was crisp with Super Bowl zeitgest,” and it would at once indict and celebrate the grand annual festival for capitalism that concludes the NFL season, investigating our near-religious adherence to rituals and ultimately condemning either the league’s owners or the citizens of the United States of America for their excesses. Something like that. It was to be a towering achievement, I promise.

Then the game happened, and the Packers won. One of the game’s best quarterbacks outplayed another of the game’s best quarterbacks, and there were some spectacular catches and hilarious commercials and epic halftime show blunders.

And then this morning, walking up Madison Avenue in the sunshine, I realized I felt nothing. Excited as I was for the Super Bowl on the length of the 5-hour drive, I no longer harbored any desire to pen the single most important piece of sportswriting of this century — or at least not if it pertained to last night’s game. The Super Bowl is what the Super Bowl is: Just another diversion to help us pass time until baseball season.

The Super Bowl has that in common with pretty much everything else besides baseball season.

On Twitter today, news trickles in from Port St. Lucie as the first Mets arrive in camp. Bullpen catcher Dave Racaniello is in the house. Josh Thole survived the perils of air travel. Things vaguely pertaining to baseball!

Baseball!

That is all.