A terrible decision

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The penalty for the Cubs allowing the Brewers to boat race them to win the National League Central was having to play in the Wild Card round while the Brewers sat around and lovingly fed each other kielbasa, or whatever they did last week.

So, the Cubs knew their pitching would be taxed, and they'd probably have to scramble to patch it together in game one, but with conveniently situated off days between games one and two, two and three and four and five, the pitching would get much needed opportunities to settle back into a more attractive state.

And then, the Cubs went ahead and blew it all to shit on their own before a single pitch was thrown in the series.

There were a lot of good reasons to not start Matt Boyd on short rest in game one, and the Cubs ignored every one of them.

• Boyd famously had not pitched very much the last few years. Due to an assortment pack of injuries, he had thrown just 202 innings total in the previous four seasons. He threw 179.2 innings this year, and was fading pretty noticeably as the season came to a close. He had posted ERAs of 1.78 and 1.97 in June and July, but in August it was 4.54 and in September it was 5.31. If there was a guy you didn't want to push unless you absolutely needed to, it was Boyd.
• During the regular season, the Cubs had looked for ways to get him an extra day or two between starts as often as possible. He made just 11 of his 31 starts on regular four days of rest. He made zero starts on short rest. And that made sense, because why would you have needed him to do that?
• He made two starts against the Brewers. The first was in Milwaukee on an extra day's rest and he was bad. He gave up six hits and a season-high six walks and five earned runs in five innings in an 8-4 loss. The second was at Wrigley on regular rest and he was only a little better. He lasted just 5.1 innings, allowed six hits and three walks and four runs, but the Cubs won 6-4. Those were both second half starts, and neither should have filled you with optimism that he'd do well against that lineup when even less rested than usual.
• What was the best, most realistic outcome for giving him a start in game one on three days rest? Four innings? So, if the thought was you could buy two extra days rest for the key parts of your bullpen if you went with Boyd on short rest, how was that going to work? Daniel Palencia, Brad Keller, Drew Pomeranz, and Caleb Thielbar all pitched twice against the Padres, and Andrew Kittredge pitched three times. They combined to throw 11.1 innings. Even if things went fairly well for Boyd (who only pitched 4.1 in his game one start against San Diego), you'd still need about five innings out of some combination of that group, and apparently you were fine with that.
• So why not start Colin Rea or Javier Assad, or even try to get two innings from one and two from the other and you'd be in the same spot you hoped to be with Boyd?
• Because then, you'd have Boyd pitching game two on extra rest, and Shōta Imanaga pitching game three with two extra days of rest. Shōta in particular has responded very well to it. With two extra days rest this year he was 3-0 with a 2.41 ERA allowing just 22 hits in 33.2 innings pitched. In his two years in the big leagues he's 6-1 with a 2.71 ERA with 45 hits allowed in 63 innings in that spot.
• If the reason for starting Boyd in game one was that he'd be available to start game five on full rest, that's true, he would. But you have to fucking get there. Or, here's a crazy thought. Maybe you wouldn't need to play that game because you'd have already won the series?