More on Wake

Terry Francona, on the decision to leave Tim Wakefield off the first-round roster:

"Up until just a little bit ago, Wakefield was on our roster. Trying to be competitive in the last month of the season. You know, Wake got a cortisone shot. In his role with us now, if something unfortunate ever happened to a starter, Wake would be asked to come in and fill something like that in the game, and he's not ready to do that. He's been fighting it for a long time and it's not fair to Wake.

"Now again, because of our feelings for Wake, some of the loyalty, some of the respect that's there, we want to give him a chance to pitch on our roster, in the series. It wasn't fair to him, and it was putting the team in a very difficult spot, which he understood. But we needed a chance to revisit it and talk about it again.

"Although, we all know Wake, he bleeds for us, but he understands it's the right thing to do. We were going to possibly put him in a situation that was not fair to him or the team. So now doing this, we can slow down his throwing, not rush him into two or three innings in a game where he's not ready, and get him ready for a start, hopefully later on. That's the thinking there."