Tim Wakefield officially reported to duty as a reliever on Friday night. The veteran knuckleballer had a chat with manager Terry Francona to discuss usage and preparation. Wakefield last pitched in relief during the 2004 American League Championship Series. The last time he worked as a reliever with any regularity was in the first half of the 2002 season. The reason for the move is the return from the disabled list of Daisuke Matsuzaka, who will start on Saturday night. "We talked to [Wakefield] about a couple of things," Francona said. "One thing we didn't want to do is try to think we were doing something to help him and [then] hinder him. He expressed, like I knew he would, 'Hey, I'll be ready for anything.' He always is, which is good. We want to keep him stretched out, for obvious reasons. At the same time, we'd like to not bring him in the first outing with the bases loaded, that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. The one thing we want to try to do is keep him stretched out, and if that's a problem, something's really going right." Depending on the workload of the starters, Francona indicated that there could be occasions when Wakefield is slotted into the rotation to give everyone an extra day of rest. "That's also very realistic," Francona said. "We'll see. We don't have a date circled, but that's certainly something that could happen."