I have no idea if the Red Sox clubhouse is toxic. 

But I do know, when it comes to winning, it's a completely irrelevant topic. Fun to gossip about? Sure. Semi-telling (at least) about certain individuals? You bet. An easy way to kill four hours on the radio or fill 1,000 or so words in a column? Of course. 

But that's where it ends, really. The 2012 Red Sox are 34-33 on June 20. That's 67 games, no longer close to an insignificant sample size. They have been just another team since last September. 

And it's not because Jon Lester doesn't like Kevin Youkilis or Dustin Pedroia hates Bobby Valentine or because John Lackey is still around the team all the time or whatever else you hear or believe. Gossip is swell -- ask Harvey Levin, I'm guessing he doesn't worry much about making mortgage payments on his house in Montecito -- but it all means nothing. Players vs. pitchers or players vs. Bobby Valentine is the sports equivalent of Us Weekly. Instead of examining a possible baby bump on Jennifer Aniston we are desperately, hopelessly trying to attach meaning to every interaction between Valentine and the players (did you see that -- Lester glared at him!) or players vs. the players (Youkilis is poisoning the other guys!). And we are all suddenly experts on body language. 

The Red Sox collapsed last September because the pitching was horrific. The Red Sox are 34-33 this season because, for a majority of the 67 games, the pitching has been mediocre. Jon Lester was supposed to be the Next Great Pitcher in this city two years ago -- 20-win seasons and 250 strikeouts and sub-3.00 ERAs and Cy Youngs were seemingly inevitable. Turns out Jon Lester -- now 28 years old, right in the fat of his prime years -- isn't that good. Josh Beckett is paid 17 million bucks a year and can't stay healthy. And when he is healthy he's not worth $17 million. Beckett's made 185 starts with the Red Sox and has an ERA of 4.05. He's not an ace by any definition. Clay Buchholz -- the real reason the Sox missed the playoffs last season, if he's healthy chicken and beer never surfaces -- was the worst pitcher in baseball for the first month of the season. And Daniel Bard was a disaster as a fifth starter, a complete failure. That's the story of the season -- has Bard been permanently damaged?

And once the pitching improved, the hitting stopped. Adrian Gonzalez -- making $21 million -- is 56th in the American League in slugging percentage. Dustin Pedroia is clearly playing hurt and that's admirable, but right now he is a very serious liability in this lineup. And Youkilis is batting .216 for the season with three extra-base hits this month. And the team's best player, Jacoby Ellsbury, hasn't been on the field for nine weeks. 

Those are actual, tangible reasons why this team has been locked in the lambada with .500 all season. I have no doubt that there is tension in the Red Sox clubhouse. None. I'm sure there are players who genuinely dislike each other, and I'm equally certain that there are players who genuinely dislike Valentine (as there are no doubt players Valentine would love to see shipped out of town yesterday).

(By the way, you and I know how this will end if the Sox finish around .500 -- Valentine will be staying in a Marriott in Bristol, Conn., three days a week in 2013. We might disagree on the importance of a toxic clubhouse, but if one does exist for this team it's not on Valentine. We were told Terry Francona lost this team, this clubhouse, last year. The players just stopped listening. And now we're hearing that some players aren't thrilled with what Valentine has to say about certain things. What's the common thread here? Valentine is going to be the fall guy if this team ultimately fails because it's the cheapest, easiest fix. But the truth is that the players will be to blame and, once again, there will be no accountability. Quite the opposite -- the next manager will be one the players want, until they don't want him anymore. Though I don't think the arrogance of these guys is tied to their lack of recent success -- they were just as spoiled last August, for example -- it's easy to look at it and conclude that this is not exactly an embraceable collection.)

Buster Olney is a terrific reporter and I'm confident he's writing exactly what he's being told. And there is no question in my mind -- zero -- that there are some lousy apples in that clubhouse. Selfish, petty, spectacularly entitled, all the usual Roger Dorn stuff. But I suspect very greatly that there lousy apples on the Yankees and Nationals and Dodgers. Those teams just have better players. 

It's easy to get lost in the gossip, in the tall grass of figuring out who ratted who out and why isn't this guy getting a contact extension and is this guy still talking to the last manager when all that matters is this: The Red Sox have hundreds of millions of dollars of dead money, and Lester, Beckett, Gonzalez, Pedroia and Youkilis have all been below any reasonable level of production this season. That's how you get to 34-33.

Clubhouse chemistry is wonderful, I guess, but it also strikes me as awfully convenient. The 2004 Red Sox are always Example No. 1, but what meant more -- Kevin Millar cracking jokes or having Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez, David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez? Where was the wasted money on that team, the hideous contracts? If the Red Sox had faced Walter Johnson in his prime in Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS instead of Kevin Brown and lost, would that have been a commentary on their lack of chemistry? I'll bet there have been 60-102 teams that have had fewer locker room issues than some 102-60 teams.  It's always and only about what the players do on the field -- tattoo that to the back of your eyelids the next time you wonder why Youkilis wasn't talking to Buchholz in the dugout.

The 2012 Red Sox are 34-33, seven games behind the Yankees. The 2012 Red Sox have been three games over .500 for exactly one day this season. Their highest-paid pitcher is on the disabled list, again. Carl Crawford is a year-and-a-half into his Red Sox career and has contributed nothing to the team. Adrian Gonzalez has one more home run than Kelly Shoppach. Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis, for different reasons, are guaranteed outs right now. And Daniel Bard has gone from one of the best eighth-inning pitchers in baseball to a guy looking to make progress in Pawtucket.

I'm as guilty as everyone else -- I'll be hunting for the gossip all season long. But that's all it is. For a team with plenty of on-field issues, don't get fooled into thinking the cosmetic ones really matter.