For starters, several options being weighed

CHICAGO -- One day after Matt Clement allowed eight earned runs, an unprecedented postseason total for a Red Sox pitcher, the club announced he would be available for bullpen duty for Game 3 tomorrow at Fenway Park. That leaves in serious question whether Clement would be given the ball for his next scheduled start, which would be Sunday in Chicago, in a decisive Game 5.

''We don't go ahead that far," manager Terry Francona said before Game 2. ''It's not advantageous for me to do that. For us to do that."

Francona was then asked if David Wells could pitch Sunday on three days' rest.

''I don't know how to tell you," he said. ''You're getting ahead and I won't."

Clement has made only two relief appearances, both as a rookie with San Diego in 1998, pitching two innings and allowing three runs.

''I'm going to do whatever they want me to do," Clement said. ''Whatever it takes. If that means pitching out of the pen, that's what I'm going to do. If it means Game 5, I'm going to do that. And if it means I don't pitch, I'm going to do that."

Clement threw before yesterday's game with bullpen duty in mind. He also wanted to test his left leg, which was hit during the third inning Tuesday by a screaming Carl Everett liner. (Clement managed to make a gutsy and accurate play to erase Everett at first).

''We don't know if this is going to work or not," Francona said of Clement's move to relief duty. ''He hasn't done it yet this year. To bounce him back arm-wise . . . The other side of this is he got smoked in the leg. He's blue, and it's going to be black."

''It's sore," Clement said. ''It's hurting pretty good. But it felt all right when I was throwing."

Clement allowed three home runs in 3 1/3 innings in Tuesday's 14-2 Game 1 loss. He hit two of the first three batters of the game and missed spots so badly that Jason Varitek repeatedly set up on one side of the plate only to reach to the other. In 36 1/3 innings since Sept. 1, he's allowed 30 runs. He allowed five of those runs in the first inning Tuesday.

''We needed him to keep us [in the game], but he couldn't," Johnny Damon said following Game 1. ''Hopefully, we can get back to him and hopefully he can be better. It's been a rough month for him. I don't know what you can say after giving up all those runs. Hopefully, he can pitch again in this series."

Reporting is their duty

MLB mandates that the Red Sox report to Fenway Park during today's offday. ''But it is not mandatory that we work out," Francona said. ''So that's what we'll do. We'll show up. We'll have optional hitting. I just don't think it's in our best interest to have mandatory hitting." . . . If Francona looked uncomfortable or displeased during his in-game interviews with ESPN Tuesday, it's probably because he was. ''I agreed I'd do it in the third inning, no later," he said. ''I just can't handle it. It's hard enough then. I don't think it's appropriate. Again, our owners are big into television, so I need to be respectful to that. I don't like it very much. I don't think people understand the amount of focus and intensity we have. You have to turn it off. That's really hard. It is very uncomfortable, very uncomfortable." . . . The Red Sox' 14-2 Game 1 defeat represented the worst loss by a World Series champion in its first playoff game following a title. The Arizona Diamondbacks, after winning the 2001 World Series, lost, 12-2, to St. Louis in Game 1 of the 2002 NLDS.

Papelbon debuts

Jonathan Papelbon made his postseason debut, pitching 1 1/3 innings in relief of Wells. He threw only 12 pitches, 10 for strikes, and allowed two hits -- a seventh-inning single to the first batter he faced, Juan Uribe, and a one-out eighth-inning single to Jermaine Dye . . . Of the 22 teams to go down, two games to none, in a Division Series only four have come back to win. The Red Sox have done so twice -- in 1999 vs. Cleveland and 2003 vs. Oakland . . . Wells became only the second pitcher (Danny Jackson is the other) to appear in a postseason game with five teams. Wells has done so with the Blue Jays, Reds, Orioles, Yankees, and now Red Sox . . . John Olerud went 0 for 4, lining twice to center and grounding twice to first base . . . Wells last night became just the ninth lefthander to start a postseason game for the Red Sox. The list: Ray Collins (1912 World Series), Dutch Leonard (1915, 1916 World Series), Babe Ruth (1916, 1918 World Series), Mickey Harris (1946 World Series), Bill Lee (1975 World Series), Bruce Hurst (1986 ALCS and World Series and 1988 ALCS), Pete Schourek (1998 ALDS), and Kent Mercker (1999 ALDS and ALCS). Hurst made the most starts of the bunch, with seven. Including Wells last night, the nine lefthanders have combined to start 22 of the team's 123 postseason games. Entering last night, no Sox lefty had started and won a postseason game since Hurst beat the Mets in Game 5 of the '86 Series . . . In Game 1, the Red Sox became only the fifth team to allow as many as five home runs in a postseason game. The others: St. Louis to the Yankees in the 1928 World Series, San Diego to the Cubs in the 1984 NLCS, San Francisco to Oakland in the 1989 World Series, and the Dodgers to St. Louis in last year's NLDS. In the '84 NLCS, even pitcher Rick Sutcliffe, an ESPN analyst for this Boston-Chicago series, homered. The Red Sox, meanwhile, had not allowed five or more home runs in any game since Aug. 8, 2004, at Detroit.