Even if Bobby didn't lose on Iglesias, you wonder if the Red Sox did

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- The way Bobby Valentine tells it, he wasn't on the losing end of the first big Red Sox decision of the spring.

"I like to think it was partly my decision," the Red Sox manager said Tuesday morning, after the Sox sent Jose Iglesias to Triple-A Pawtucket and handed the opening day shortstop job to Mike Aviles.

That could well be true, even though we know that Valentine had earlier favored keeping Iglesias, while general manager Ben Cherington wanted Iglesias to begin the year in the minor leagues.

Valentine suggested Tuesday that his thinking on Iglesias evolved over the course of the spring, and crystallized when Iglesias went 0-for-3 in a game last week.

"I don't stop believing in a player until he stops believing in himself," Valentine said. "I saw that the other day. I saw that look of wonderment.

"It's not the time to be searching."

Valentine has praised Aviles' play at shortstop the last few days, and he did again Tuesday.

"Mike just didn't do anything wrong," he said. "He just did everything right."

The bigger question for the Red Sox is whether they did anything wrong. When he traded Marco Scutaro to the Rockies before spring training, Cherington left the Sox with a choice at shortstop between a kid whose offense was suspect (Iglesias) and a career utility man whose range is suspect (Aviles).

Aviles has been out of the big leagues since 2008, and in all that time he has barely started a full season's worth of games (141) at short. He started there just eight times last year, six of them after the Red Sox acquired him from the Royals at midseason.

Since the day they traded Nomar Garciaparra in July 2004, the Red Sox have had 18 different players start games at shortstop, as Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe points out. The plan is for Iglesias to stabilize the position.

That's still the plan.

"As Ben told [Iglesias], it's not if, it's when," Valentine said.

As Valentine admitted, the first time a ground ball goes by Aviles, the natural reaction in Boston will be that Iglesias would have had it. The bigger question is whether that will be Valentine's reaction, too.

He says it won't. He says that's not fair.

And he says he's "totally" on board with this decision.

Even if he wasn't, he explained everything Tuesday in a way that allowed you to believe he was. That's fine, and that's the right way to handle it.

This decision doesn't necessarily say anything about the evolving relationship between Valentine and Cherington.

The bigger question is whether it says anything about how good a team the Red Sox will be this year.