Wake to DL, smells fishy but I'm cool with it

Back to blogging with a Sox-related post...

Call me crazy, but given Wake's history the past couple of seasons of breaking down in the second half, it's no surprise to me that the Red Sox today placed him on the 15-day DL with a "lower back strain." Sounds like they wanted to give him some recovery time tacked onto the All-Star break. Meanwhile, it's nice to see Buchholz getting a few more starts to prove he belongs, and hopefully nail down a rotation spot for the second half. Smoltz has not been a significant upgrade from Dice-K to this point, Penny has slipped a bit, and Wake, sorry to say it, is due for a bit of additional regression in the 2nd half, so nice to see Clay come up and hopefully strengthen the rotation. Letting him rot at AAA was stunting his development at this point, honestly. While not stellar, last Friday's 5 2/3 inning, 1 ER performance against Toronto was more than good enough, and better than what we've seen from anyone else in the rotation thusfar in the second half. That said, the Sox could still use a bat, but that's a discussion for another day.
[UPDATE: I was super wrong about Wake. He ended up having ugly bone chips in his back and only made four starts of progressively declining quality down the stretch.]