The Red Sox clubhouse has turned into Goldilocks, the players searching for the bed that is not too hard and not too soft, but just right.

Last September, the clubhouse trampled on a players’ manager with championship pedigree. Terry Francona was too soft. So Boston enlisted Bobby Valentine, whose acerbic way has the Red Sox players complaining to ownership that he is too hard on them.

So what will be “just right” for this finicky group?

We can assume Boston, which opens a three-game set in The Bronx tonight, will have to make that decision soon. Red Sox president Larry Lucchino, who pushed for Valentine’s hiring over the objections of new GM Ben Cherington last offseason, told WEEI yesterday Valentine was safe for the season. But if a roster in hate with its current manager does not get out of its doldrums — fourth place and under .500 — then there would seem more likelihood Kevin Youkilis and Valentine would sing “Kumbaya” while holding hands on the mound at Fenway Park than that Valentine will return next season.

Rumors persist the Red Sox want to make their former pitching coach, John Farrell, manager. The little problem is that Farrell is in his second year as Toronto’s skipper and under contract.

I am not here to fire Valentine, a man I like and think had the thinnest possible chance for success in a soap-opera environment poisoned well before his arrival. But, fair or not, if he truly is one and done, then my managerial suggestion for Boston would be Jason Varitek. He would allow the Red Sox to co-opt the idea of their main rival while honoring what is in vogue in the sport right now.

Like Joe Girardi was for the Yankees, Varitek is a former championship catcher for the Red Sox. So he comes with built-in credibility within this group. Look we can say the Red Sox players need to look in the mirror and not the manager’s office for the problem. But the reality is this core is coming back again next season and, if that is the case, the Red Sox are going to need to find someone who commands instant respect and who can begin to re-establish sanctity and sanity within what has become a Wild West baseball setting. Varitek should have that immediately with this group because it is so familiar with his preparation, professionalism and sturdiness as a teammate.

In the past, you would dismiss someone who was just a year out of the game with no professional managing experience. But the success this year Robin Ventura of the White Sox and the Cardinals’ Mike Matheny — both returning to old haunts as first-time-anywhere managers — is changing the rules. In addition, Don Mattingly is having great success with the Dodgers after never previously managing.

Varitek fits the mold of someone you believe could blend leadership, seriousness of purpose and the ability to communicate with today’s players. He also has institutional memory of when the Red Sox were a model franchise and not a group ready to turn each manager into “Shark Week” chum. The Red Sox are an example of how quickly the model — and reputations — can collapse.

Consider just a year ago today the Red Sox were only a half-game behind the Yankees for both the division lead and the AL’s best record. Theo Epstein was still the GM and viewed as a genius architect, not someone who fled and left a bunch of horror-show contracts in his wake. Francona was still Torre-esque, not someone who lost the clubhouse. Dustin Pedroia was an unquestioned leader, not a centerpiece of a mutiny. Jacoby Ellsbury was an MVP candidate, not a guy who cannot stay consistently healthy.

And Josh Beckett, Jon Lester and John Lackey — all of whom had won decisive games in the World Series — were big-game guys you could trust in huge moments, not beer-drinking, fried-chicken eating insubordinates.

About the only high-profile guy currently in the Red Sox employ who has not had his reputation obliterated is Bobby Valentine, but only because he came in so widely disliked and distrusted. Rightly or wrongly, he has not shaken that in three-quarters of a season. It very well could cost him his last best shot as a major league manager after one season. If that occurs, Boston must think about countering low-morale with high-Tek.

Boras’ threat clearly a factor in babying Strasburg

Scott Boras insisted in a phone call yesterday, “I have never discussed with [Nationals] GM Mike Rizzo what to do with Stephen Strasburg.” But he then painted a picture in which he was, at the very least, a co-conspirator in the controversial decision to shut down the Washington phenom at about 160 innings this year — well short of the playoffs.

From the day Strasburg signed as the first overall pick, Boras, as his representative, said he told Nationals leadership it was important to protect an asset “whose body was not fully matured at 20.” Then after Strasburg’s Tommy John surgery, Boras armed Rizzo with reams of information indicating overburdening pitchers 23 and under greatly increases the risk of injury and strongly stated the organization should follow the conservative protocols of Dr. Lewis Yocum, who not only performed the operation, but has been at the vanguard of studying the impact of pitching on the arm.

If that were not enough, this certainly sounds like an “or else” threat about what would happen if the Nationals disregarded the counsel and Strasburg busted: “There is an ethical and legal consideration here,” Boras said. “Who is not going to follow expert medical advice? What kind of liability do you take on to ignore that?”

Boras has been obsessed with this since the Braves pushed his client, Steve Avery, to throw 828 1/3 innings between the regular and postseasons through his age-23 campaign — the eighth-highest total in that age group during the expansion (post 1969) era. Avery never had a high-caliber season again and was done at 29. Now some of the pitchers high on that list — such as Bert Blyleven, Felix Hernandez and CC Sabathia — have gone on to thrive and have high-level health. But the list is filled with a boatload of cautionary tales such as Dwight Gooden, Bret Saberhagen, Don Gullett, Jeremy Bonderman and Alex Fernandez.

“I just keep going back to Steve Avery,” Boras said. “The data was not there, the research was not there when Steve pitched. We have now done that research. We share it with teams. Is it exact? No. But there is greater success doing it this way [being cautious with young pitchers such as Strasburg].”