So what's so significant about getting Cup minutes?
If you're in a competitive league, being able to play your best players in the league games and having good enough players remaining to play in the Cup and still win is a good thing. You can always instead choose one of your three games a week to throw, and a lot of teams do that semi-routinely, but maximizing your league performance *and* Cup performance helps keep your fan survey up, which is good for the bottom line.