ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Thursday night could have had a very different twist. When Will Middlebrooks was a senior in high school in 2007, he started to get a sense that three teams seemed most interested in his services in the upcoming amateur draft.There was, of course, the Red Sox, who ultimately took him in the fifth round. There was a Twins team that reached out to him in the first round, before Minnesota selected center fielder Ben Revere. And there was the Rays.But with Tampa Bay, there was a bit of a catch. "I believe it was for pitching," Middlebrooks -- who says he sat at 91-94 mph and bumped 97 mph when on the mound -- recalled on Thursday night, after leading the Sox to a 4-3 win. It's hard to suggest that the Rays have ever hit a false note when it comes to pitching, but in the case of Middlebrooks, it's now pretty hard to imagine him being anything but a big league third baseman. And if Tampa Bay hadn't already drawn that conclusion, Middlebrooks drove it home in

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- He is the constant. When he does not feel good, he contributes. When no one else is hitting, he often is the one who seems intent on singlehandedly pulling the team out of its adversity. If there is a player who can be described as doing something every day to help his team win, he is it. Dustin Pedroia is the constant, the steady beat of a winning team. He is the metro(g)nome. Naturally, it was Pedroia who helped to pound open the floodgates for the Red Sox in their 9-2 victory Wednesday night against the Rays. With the team ensnared in a 5-for-40 slump with runners in scoring position, he stepped to the plate with runners on first and second and one out in the bottom of the third. Though he fell behind 0-2 to David Price, Pedroia stayed on a backdoor cutter away and lined it to right field for an RBI single. He set the tone, and the Sox marched in step behind him, with the next three hitters all collecting hits and, finally, Stephen Drewproviding the exclamation

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- The Red Sox need for this to be a beginning. Jacoby Ellsbury quietly had one of his best games in some time on Tuesday. He reached base three times, taking a stray Matt Moore fastball off the shoulder and then walking twice, in four plate appearances in the Red Sox' 5-3 loss to the Rays. The contest represented the seventh time this year -- but the first in the punchless month of May -- in which Ellsbury had reached base three or more times. Few players on the Sox have a chance to deliver such a transformative impact in all facets of the game as Ellsbury. He is a game-changer, of course, on the bases -- something to which his AL-leading 12 stolen bases attest. And it's been meaningful for the Sox that, after an injury-marred 2012 campaign, the 29-year-old has once again been in the lineup every day so far this year. But to date, while he's been a contributor when on the bases and he's been an excellent defensive center fielder (he ranks sixth among big league center

Perhaps it shouldn't be terribly surprising. With the arrival of both notable absences and consequent instability of roles has come instability of performance. A bullpen that was deep and had clear definition of job descriptions has seen its ranks thinned noticeably in a fashion that has had the Red Sox struggling to keep pace with opposing bullpens. It now seems like ages ago that the Red Sox enjoyed a dominating late-innings march over the Yankees on Opening Day. Jon Lester lasted just five innings, but the team didn't need any more out of him thanks to dominating work by (in order) Junichi Tazawa, Andrew Miller, Andrew Bailey, Koji Uehara and Joel Hanrahan. It was a striking display of a handful of pitchers with overpowering stuff, a suggestion that the Sox' bullpen depth could permit it to navigate even as much as four innings without breaking a sweat. Even when Joel Hanrahan landed on the DL early due to a strained hamstring, the Sox continued to show an ability to win with such an