So often in the first half, as the Red Sox were putting up a so-so performance on their way to a 43-43 mark, people would ask me, "Trags, what do you think of Bobby Valentine?" or "What is the clubhouse like with Bobby V in charge?"

Well, it certainly has a different feel than that of Terry Francona. But it’s a very subtle difference and a feel extraordinarily hard to detail.

Walking into the Francona clubhouse every afternoon at 3:30 it was common to see the Red Sox manager walking around talking to players, talking with them behind closed doors or playing cards with the door slightly open.

Coming into the Valentine clubhouse, it’s what you don’t see that’s really the only difference. You don’t see quite as many player-manager meetings, you don’t see a lot of joking from the manager directed at players. And I’ve yet to see a card game in the newly renovated manager’s office.

Valentine will be the first to tell you that he’s made some mistakes in his first three months of managing the Red Sox.

There was the interview with Joe Amorsino on Channel 7 -- questioning the heart and desire of Kevin Youkilis -- when the season was barely two weeks old.

There was the handling of the bullpen early on and talking publicly about the role of Daniel Bard when privately he knew the reliever was out of his comfort zone and out of place as a starter.

There was the Josh Beckett malfunction, when he tried to defend his starting pitcher publicly while privately steamed at him for hitting the links in protest of Valentine’s decision to skip a start and give his ailing right shoulder a rest.

There have been numerous meetings with team leaders like David Ortiz to air out dirty laundry between the pitchers and position players.

There have been the inside complaints of players concerning a lack of communication.

But I’m here to tell you what Bobby Valentine has done managing the most dysfunctional team in baseball is nothing short of remarkable.

He was hired by Larry Lucchino and has worked with general manager Ben Cherington to instill a new atmosphere in the clubhouse. More accountability and more professionalism in a workplace wrought with skepticism, both on the outside and from inside.

He lost Jacoby Ellsbury to injury just two weeks into the season, hasn’t had Carl Crawford all year, watched as Kevin Youkilis got off to a brutal start at the plate, lost his closer to a thumb injury, and lost his All-Star-caliber second baseman to a pair of thumb injuries.

His team is 12-20 when Josh Beckett and Jon Lester start.

Just when Will Middlebrook burst onto the scene, the youngster pulled his hamstring and had to sit on the bench while the Yankees came into Fenway and took three out of four, thus ending all realistic hope of catching New York in the second half of the season for the AL East title.

“I would say that it was extremely challenging,” Valentine said before Sunday’s final game before the break. “I don’t know how to rate it or anything, but Major League Baseball is very challenging. Managing a new team is very challenging, and we had some situations that added to the mix.”

Over the weekend, Valentine started a lineup that included Mauro Gomez, Pedro Ciriaco and Daniel Nava and a bench that included Brent Lillibridge and Kelly Shoppach.

Now, this weekend in St. Petersburg, Fla., Valentine gets two of his key pieces back as Ellsbury returns from a separated shoulder and Middlebrooks returns from left hamstring tightness. And like last weekend, it very much feels like the season is on the line.

“It’s going to be a challenge,” Valentine said. “New guys, where they’re going to hit, how we’re going to play together and what kind of health we’re going to have is yet to be seen. But I’m very optimistic. The guys I have today I think we can win a ballgame with and the guys that I have after the break will be the same type of group.”

Early on this spring, one player told me, “It’s not his job to play, it’s ours. We’ll be judged on our record, not how we handle a new manager.”

Those words are very, very revealing.

In other words, the players have been playing for themselves, knowing that Valentine can’t take the fall for this team, especially after last September.

Is that pressure somehow getting to them?

If you ask pitching coach Bob McClure, the answer is probably.

“Some of them might be trying too hard,” McClure said of his starters and their ERA north of 5.00 in the first inning this season.

Valentine is not the Manager of the Year in the American League. Buck Showalter in Baltimore and even Joe Girardi in the Bronx are ahead of him in that race. But we’re not judging Valentine on that standard. And neither is John Henry, Larry Lucchino or Tom Werner.

He was called in to restore order to the workplace, and he’s done that.

One of the biggest in-game jobs of the manager is to handle the bullpen. There’s no one who can -- outside of the frequency of Alfredo Aceves in games -- argue with the results of the Red Sox bullpen after the April 21 debacle at Fenway.

He has learned quickly which players he can rely on in late-game situations and which players he trusts at the top of the lineup with Ellsbury on the shelf for nearly three months.

For months leading up to spring training I heard so many stories from colleagues in New York about how Bobby V would eventually blow up, how when the heat got too hot he would eventually snap and his true colors would show.

Well, aside from saying how he “hates the Yankees” and his “wonder about” Youkilis’ desire, there really hasn’t been that moment. He’s held it all in. He’s been as professional as one might expect given the intense “challenge” of the job.

Will he be back in 2013 to serve out the second year of his two-year deal? Probably not if the Red Sox miss the playoffs for a third straight season.

Bobby Valentine has done everything in his power to get what he could out of the 2012 Red Sox. Now it’s time for the leaders beyond David Ortiz to step up or run the risk of being traded out of town just three months after so many experts had this team bouncing back to a World Series appearance.

Now we go to the Trags Bag for a game of fill in the blank. The best plan of attack for Red Sox management in the second half is ____________. Take your best shot.

@robrien1968 be a seller this year. '97 got Tek and Lowe.

@clarkadamjames Sell the franchise to Bob Kraft

@ehannan73 playing the kids didn't hurt the record and the owners have money. Rebuild through trades

@Chopper_Concord trade trade then trade some more. Out with the disgruntled and in with the gruntled.

@leftyclint you perform you play. Don't care if your high paid player or minor league call up.

@CraigMacCormack Entertain offers for all

@mtkr Fire Valentine. Yeah I know it's not his fault, but I don't like him.

@_TheChief Sox should trade as many brinks trucks as it takes to have Halladay or Hernandez walk through that door

@JohnBanusiewicz Eat the sunk money, blow it up and start from scratch. Waiting through a rebuild is better than the current charade.

@cnelson65 remember that they're still in this thing.

@ct_smoke clean house and call it what it is...a bridge year

@TP_King spend more $$$!

Chris Quigley (via LinkedIn) "Wave the white flag: especially with the brutal schedule coming up this month."

Tom Torrisi (via LinkedIn) “Surrender!”

Shawn Ryder (from Facebook) become sellers (really,really hate saying that...)

Ryan Durling (from Facebook) sell. as in, the team