The exhibition season is now drawing near. Just two more days of workouts remain at the Red Sox’ minor-league complex before the start of games on Wednesday, with the schedule kicking off with a day-night doubleheader in which the Sox will play Boston College at City of Palms Park before relocating down the road to Hammond Stadium to play against the Twins in the first contest for Mayor’s Cup supremacy. Clearly, the season is coming into focus.

With that in mind, here are five takeaway lessons from Sunday in the Fort:

1) A bored Kevin Youkilis adjusted his facial hair, shedding his formidably dense goatee in favor of a Fu-Manchu (deemed the Youk-Fu). A more engaged Kevin Youkilis held court on all things related to the Red Sox offense, among them the question of David Ortiz‘ contributions in 2009. Youkilis seemed convinced that Ortiz has the motivation to come up big in the coming season.

2) At this stage of spring training, a pitcher’s command comes and goes. Unfortunately for outfielder/first baseman Brad Wilkerson, Jon Lester had a command lapse while throwing batting practice against the man competing for the fifth outfield spot, drilling Wilkerson on the back of the triceps. This came a couple days after infielder Nick Green got popped by Daniel Bard, the prospect with the effortless high-90s fastball. (“It was pretty firm,” Green said with a wince of admiration. “The ball definitely comes out of his hand pretty good.”)

The command lapse aside, there was another intriguing element to Lester’s B.P. session that will serve as today’s Extra Innings Mechanical Nugget of the Day. Lester tossed a couple of swing-and-miss changeups on Sunday. Last year, the pitch was a rarely used fourth offering (after the fastball, cutter and curve) that Lester used for the sake of ground balls. With the caveat that it is very early in the spring, and batters have yet to lock in their timing, it was worth noting that on a couple of occasions Lester sold the arm action of the changeup well enough, and achieved sufficient fade with the pitch, that he elicited swings and misses from right-handed batters.

3) Bard has made some solid impressions with the power that he generates with such a seemingly effortless delivery. Pitching coach John Farrell has also taken note of Junichi Tazawa‘s four-pitch mix and left-handed starter Kris Johnson‘s three pitch ensemble. Tazawa, like many Japanese pitchers, has a quirk-filled delivery that slugger David Ortiz confirmed made it difficult to pick up the ball out of the hurler’s hand.

As for Johnson, some talent evaluators suggest that he features three solid-average major-league pitches: a low-90s fastball, curve and changeup. The curve was an above-average pitch when Johnson was a freshman in college, but he underwent Tommy John surgery in 2005, and since coming back has yet to show the same hammer.

“(The arsenal) is there enough to compete, but it’s not yet that refined to dominate,” Johnson (8-9, 3.63 last year in Double-A) said recently. “There are some minor tweaks to tighten up my breaking ball and slow down my changeup. Once that happens and I can do that on a consistent basis, then I’ll be good to go.”

4) Rule 5 draftee Miguel Gonzalez will undergo an arthrogram test to determine the severity of his elbow soreness, and will be shut down until at least the end of the week. That disappointment notwithstanding, Gonzalez has had an interesting journey to get to Red Sox camp.

5) For what it’s worth, catcher Dusty Brown put on a pretty impressive power display in batting practice on Sunday, sending one rocket after another over the left-field fence. In Triple-A Pawtucket last year, Brown hit 12 homers in 297 at-bats while achieving an .849 OPS.

Jason Varitek reflected recently on how he envisions his role when it comes to tutoring the likes of Brown, George Kottaras, or another young backstop who might emerge as the so-called Red Sox catcher of the future. For now, the Red Sox captain views his chief responsibility as being to prepare for 120 or so games a year, but he acknowledged that there will come a time when his playing time diminishes, and when that happens, he is prepared to serve as a mentor to his successor.