BOSTON -- A beautiful day for baseball began with Bobby Valentine expressing an opinion that was practically as sunny as the skies above Boston.

“I think we’re a playoff team,” the manager professed during a morning interview with WEEI radio, “and I think we’re going to be there before the season is over.”

It was consistent with what the skipper has been saying about his team all along. Sometimes to a fault, he’s stuck by his squad, consistently insisting that this club has a run in it — even if it’s seemingly been running in quicksand since April. In his comments to the media he’s maintained a conviction that things will get straightened out and his Red Sox are still capable of getting where they want to be come October.

Publicly, at least, his faith has lived somewhere between blind and inexplicable, based on the mediocrity in which Boston has been mired for most of the season. But Wednesday afternoon his players offered an explanation on his behalf.

And they may have made the clearest case yet why their manager doesn’t deserve as much of the blame as he’s been getting.

Ultimately it came in defeat, on the wrong side of a 10-9 slugfest with the mighty Rangers. It came in a game they never led. And, more tellingly, it came in a game they never gave up.

From the first inning they were forced to dig out from underneath an eight-run, five-inning abomination from Josh Beckett. They trailed 3-0 after half a frame, 6-3 halfway through, then 9-5 into the seventh — but they fought back to even the game at 3, and then again when Will Middlebrooks’ Monster shot squared the contest at 9.

Their starting pitcher put them in a corner, yet they continuously tried to punch their way out of it. They scrapped, they grinded, they battled — just as they have throughout the season. For all their deficiencies and difficulties, this is not a team that has generally lacked effort or intensity. Most nights it has played with better attitude than aptitude. And that reflects on Valentine.

As Adrian Gonzalez pointed out on Tuesday, after ownership gave its manager a vote of confidence, Valentine doesn’t swing the bat, doesn’t throw the ball, doesn’t play the field. All he can do is prepare his players to play, and put them in the best position possible, and by and large the Red Sox’ attitude and energy suggest he’s done that job successfully.

The talent just hasn’t been there cohesively or consistently enough to allow them to escape a season-long malaise.

“Great comeback,” Valentine said afterward. “Guys battled hard all day long.”

Rare have been the games where that wasn’t the case for these Red Sox, who have repeatedly been undermined by the failures of one of baseball’s worst starting staffs, and may not have a lot of comebacks to their credit but haven’t often quit.

To illustrate how infrequently they’ve given up on games, consider that despite their brutal pitching they’ve lost fewer games by at least five runs (12) than the Ranger club (13) with the best record in the American League. Then consider that they’ve won just 11 of 25 one-run contests to understand how often the difference has come down to just a pivotal play or two.

Some of that falls on the manager, too. That’s when strategy shows up most, like it did Wednesday when he chose to bring Alfredo Aceves in with men at the corners instead of starting him with a clean inning in the ninth. (Aceves allowed one of them to score, and it stood as the game-winner.)

But even then, it came down to execution. Clayton Mortensen let the runners reach. Aceves let them score. And Beckett put the team in that spot to start. Valentine had far more to do with the team’s response to that adversity than he did with playing its way into the predicament — and there they battled to the final out, even getting the equalizer into scoring position in the last-gasp ninth.

“That’s kind of what they’ve done all year. They deserve a lot of credit,” said Beckett, who gave up eight hits, two walks and three homers. “They kept battling back.”

“We’re fighting,” said Pedroia, who scored twice ahead of Gonzalez’ three doubles. “We’re playing hard. It’s not for a lack of effort. We’re busting our butt as a team to win ballgames.”

And that’s why Valentine remains convinced it’ll come together. Now 55-57, the odds of it actually happening become longer by the day, as by now the Sox need to go 35-15 to get to 90 wins, the expected wild-card minimum — but, with reason, the manager is confident they’ll keep battling to make that happen.

And the longer his players do, the more confidence the organization is likely to have in its manager, as well.

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