I assume I was aware of this when the new playoff formats were announced, but if so I totally forgot about it. From Buster Olney:

The wild-card games will be conducted under circumstances we’ve never seen before in the postseason. The participating teams will set 25-man rosters for this one-game, winner-take-all extravaganza — rosters that don’t have to carry over to the Division series matchup. So the Braves and the other wild-card entrants don’t have to carry multiple starting pitchers.

Just more distortion from a setup that already distorts all that is important in baseball: depth, stamina and the ability to win a majority of games as opposed to EVERY GAME MATTERING like it does in other sports.

It’s quite possible that we’ll have a wild card games with starters going three innings, followed by seven relievers used over the course of the next six innings with every quasi-critical situation leading to some matchup-optimizing pitching change. All of the anti-excitement of an All-Star Game except the outcome matters way more.

Why on earth are the rules this way? If the wild card game is the playoffs, why aren’t teams required to use their postseason rosters? This makes zero sense to me and just underscores how contrived the play-in game is.