FORT MYERS, Fla. – The attention to detail here at the complex called Fenway South is impressive.

When players show up for work in the morning, they see a video loop playing on TV monitors throughout the clubhouse reinforcing the drills the team will be working on that day.

These are clips of pitchers fielding bunts on the third-base side, hitters driving balls to the opposite field, runners getting a good first step.

Not exactly the Top 10 plays of the day. Yet they are a reminder of good fundamentals, an attempt to help rebuild a strong foundation for the Red Sox players.

On the walls near those monitors are inspirational quotes from a pair of Red Sox Hall of Famers. One of them serves as a reminder of the importance fundamentals play in the daily grind of a baseball season:

“Ballplayers are not born great. They’re not born great hitters or pitchers or managers, and luck isn’t a big factor. No one has come up with a substitute for hard work.” – Ted Williams.

That quote could’ve been attributed to Manager Bobby Valentine. Like any big-league manager, Valentine believes in hard work. Unlike most of the managers we’ve seen in Boston over the years, he is very hands-on from the moment he walks through the door. Which is usually a few hours earlier than everyone else.

Valentine has made his presence felt in the first full week of workouts. He moves from field to field at a hyper pace, watching as many players as possible. He’s very vocal with players, making suggestions and telling them what’s expected.

“We’re just going to see if we’re planning our work and we’re working our plan,” Valentine said. “Specifically, some of the stuff was for timing. If we were to practice something, I’d like to have it as close to game-real as possible; otherwise, why bother?”

It will be a while until we know if this approach will lead to more wins in 2012, but what has already been clear is that it’s an approach this team desperately needed this spring. It’s a far more businesslike attitude in these early days of workouts. Players are spending less time standing around the field and more time working on specific parts of the game.

One of the most obvious examples of this is the “no shagging” philosophy Valentine has enforced. Pitchers aren’t standing around in the outfield catching baseballs while hitters take their rips in the cage. Instead, those pitchers are working on pickoff moves on another field while the baseballs fall into an empty outfield.

A less obvious example of this are the quiet words Valentine will share with a player. He’s quick to speak up when he sees something that needs to be corrected, and just as quick to shout out positive reinforcement to a player doing something well.

“I’m just coaching,” Valentine said. “I coach the coaches early, and then I see if the coaches are doing it and if the players are doing it. It’s the idea of inspecting what you expect. If you expect something to happen and you’re not looking to see if it happened, the next day when you try to build on it, you don’t have the foundation.”

That foundation is being built in these early days. It’s clear in the work being done on the fields. As clear as the writing on the wall in the clubhouse. Like another quote from another Sox great:

“I think about baseball when I wake up in the morning. I think about it all day and I dream about it at night. The only time I don’t think about it is when I’m playing it.” – Carl Yastrzemski

Tom Caron is the studio host for Red Sox broadcasts on the New England Sports Network. His column appears in the Press Herald on Tuesdays.