With his team at risk of losing the momentum it had gleaned from five straight wins if it lost two in a row to division-leading Tampa Bay, Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine approached Thursday's late innings with more urgency than he might normally in the middle of May.

Leading 3-2, he used three pitchers for a batter apiece to bridge the sixth and seventh innings. Then, leading 5-2, he brought his closer in with two outs and two on in the eighth.

“I was going after this game tonight,” Valentine told reporters afterward. “I thought the guys really wanted this game. I was going to do everything we could to win it. Not that I don't manage that way every day, but sometimes I'll take some future considerations. There weren't any future considerations today.”

But that doesn't mean the future didn't become a little bit clearer in the process.

If this was how Valentine attacks the task of winning a game he considers critical, it should offer clues not only as to his managerial style — which, evidenced in employing five relievers to face the Rays' final 13 batters, was certainly aggressive — but also in how he views the personnel that makes up his bullpen as the season moves quickly toward its quarter pole. And those deployments could be an indication of how roles could finally be developing after six weeks featuring mostly situational irregularity.

The first revelation may have come with the first man summoned, when Rich Hill took over for Felix Doubront with two men in scoring position in the sixth. Since coming off the disabled list in the final days of April, the sidewinding southpaw had twice pitched in a tie game — but one of those instances came in the 13th inning, and this marked the first time he was asked to protect a lead of less than four runs. With lefties 1-for-15 against him after that outing, Thursday suggested he could have emerged as the team's go-to guy against those hitters.

Next in was Scott Atchison, another whose appearance could be an indication that increased responsibility is forthcoming. He hadn't entered a major-league game with the Sox leading by less than three runs since September 2010, a stretch of 35 appearances. Then came Andrew Miller, whose command has been surprisingly pinpoint since his promotion — he started Friday with eight strikeouts and one walk in 6 1/3 innings — but in whom Valentine has quickly developed a confidence, especially against lefties.

After Miller struck out Carlos Pena, and the one-run lead remained in tact, bringing in Vicente Padilla to face the right-handed Sean Rodriguez made good sense. Though it was with that job done that things may have become revealing again.

Through the early portion of the season, it had appeared Franklin Morales would fulfill the eighth-inning setup role vacated by Daniel Bard, then by Mark Melancon. And it was a job he seemed to earn, pitching well except for a couple of hiccups that accounted for five of the six earned runs he'd allowed going into Friday.

However, Valentine's faith in the left-hander certainly seems to have lessened lately. Morales allowed at least two baserunners in each of his first five May appearances (only one of which lasted longer than an inning), while his strikeout rate plummeted, and though he'd worked on Wednesday those 19 pitches were all he'd thrown in the previous five days by the time the eighth inning arrived on Thursday. He was rested, and once Matt Joyce was announced as a pinch hitter Tampa had back-to-back lefties due, followed by switch-hitter Ben Zobrist — who was hitting .152 from the right side this season.

Yet Valentine stuck with Padilla. And he even afforded him enough slack that the righty remained in the game long enough to face the potential tying run before Alfredo Aceves relieved him. The one pitcher whose role has been the same since Day 1, the closer allowed one of his inherited runners to score, but subsequently worked a perfect ninth to notch his sixth consecutive save.

With that flawless frame, Boston's bullpen entered Friday having yielded only a single score in 14 1/3 innings, and all of 13 earned runs in 85 innings since April 21 — the day they surrendered 13 in a single game. When the entire collecting is rolling like that, a manager is naturally going to look good because the vast majority of his pitching decisions pay positive dividends. For a month now, the who and the when have barely mattered each time Valentine's called upon a reliever.

But Thursday, in the process of getting a win he badly wanted, he might've given a glimpse of what that'll look like when it matters again.

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As the Sox were deliberating what to do at third base once Kevin Youkilis completes his rehab assignment and returns from the disabled list, Will Middlebrooks was giving the club more data on which to base its decision. And it wasn't all good.

Though he still carried an impressive .847 on-base plus slugging through the 2-for-16 slump he brought to Philadelphia, his splits began to suggest opposing pitchers had discovered a weakness. According to baseball-reference.com, Middlebrooks was still hitting power pitchers (against whom he had a .982 OPS. He was pounding average pitchers (against whom he had a .385 average and 1.077 OPS).

But finesse pitchers — classified as those in baseball's lower third of walks plus strikeouts — had held him to a .207 average and .682 OPS. Increasing difficulty with offspeed pitches was a primary factor in Middlebrooks striking out in 20 of his first 61 major league plate appearances, and until he improves it'll be an area pitchers keep trying to exploit.

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As Jarrod Saltalamacchia's batting average climbed from .225 to .269 in a span of five days, and Kelly Shoppach crushed a ball clear over the Monster, the Red Sox catching tandem again moved among the most productive at the position. They may be afterthoughts in their own lineup, but the Red Sox backstops began Friday with a major-league leading 21 extra-base hits and an American League-best .518 slugging percentage. Saltalamacchia was personally the AL leader in doubles (nine) and slugging (.527) for a catcher.

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Stat of the week: At the start of play Friday, six AL teams had scored more runs than they'd allowed. Except for Texas, all of them played in the AL East.

Dave D'Onofrio covers the Red Sox for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Sunday News. His e-mail address is ddonof13@gmail.com.