Adam McCalvy tweeted that in the wild card era 1995 to present starters on short rest in the postseason are 30-45 with a 4.58 era averaging 5.1 innings. That doesn't include Morton's number today which would make those numbers even worse. Given those numbers I have a hard time taking anyone seriously that thinks CC screwed up by not pitching Burnes on short rest. I'm sure CC would have rather had Suter and Williams pitch some of the innings in this series that he gave to other arms, but those guys weren't available despite the organization doing everything possible to have the team healthy for the post season. Other than his first game disaster start and his last game hiccup against the Dodgers Ashby looked pretty darned impressive. Unless we were going to sweep the Braves in 3 games those guys were going to have to get some outs at some point. At the end of the day we lost because the bats went cold for two games and our best pitcher and arguably the best reliever in the game got beat by their best hitter. It happens. The bucks won a championship because Durant's toe was on the line. Sometimes you need a little luck to win a title. They obviously didn't have it this year. Each situation is different. Some WS are won because an ace pitched well in games 1, 4, and 7. No Williams and no presumably multi inning Hader is one of the reasons Burnes pitches game 4. Throw in no Suter too. Too many guys throwing meaningful innings in the NLDS. Has Strickland thrown with a two run lead ever this year? Yet he and Ashby are expected to hold down the fort, not to mention presumably Boxberger in the 9th, of an elimination playoff game? 34 innings…… Woodruff 7.1 Burnes 6 Peralta 4 Lauer 3.2 Houser 3 Ashby 2.2 Strickland 2.1 Boxberger 2 Hader 2 Cousins 1 No pitcher has won 3 games as a starter in the WS since 1968. Randy Johnson won two as a starter and one as a reliever in 2001. So I'm glad you aren't in charge of strategy for the brewers because pinning our WS hopes on some miracle once in a generation pitching performance is pretty silly. Strickland pitched in 57 games for the Brewers this season. He pitched in 4 games in a save situation. He pitched in 4 games that were tied. He didn't have a ton of high leverage innings for the Brewers but then you probably wouldn't expect him too since we have Williams and Hader. Boxberger locked down the 7th inning role pretty well. You seem to have a very short term memory. Burnes in game 1 only went 6 innings and that was with extra rest. And it was only scoreless because of a tremendous play by Tellez and Narvaez. There have been 18 playoff games this post season. 36 starts. I see two starters made it 7+ innings and two made it 6+ innings. Plenty of other big name starters haven't been able to make it through 4 innings. This idea that Burnes was going to come in and pitch 6 solid innings on short rest is ridiculous.