If you’ve ever watched the reality game show Survivor, you’ll know that one of the show’s staples is something called the “blindside vote.”

It happens when it’s time to vote someone off the island, and an unsuspecting player ends up going home because they believe the plan is for the vote to go one way when in fact it goes another, thus blindsiding them.

Not all blindsides are the same. Sure, it ends up with someone leaving the game who didn’t think was going to happen, but often there are other players, at least one, but usually two or three, who also weren’t in the loop on the plan, and although they get to continue to participate in the game, the immediate reaction and fallout from the blindside leaves them angry and frustrated.

Sometimes, it’s for the best. Maybe that player or players had grown too close to the blindsided player who was voted off and in order to make the big move they had to be firewalled from the plan. However, the remaining player or players standing in the hierarchy of remaining competitors isn’t tenuous.

Ranger Suarez was one of those players Saturday night.


Almost everyone else knew of the plan to lift Suarez from the game early and attack the Braves with the power arms in the bullpen. And while the merits of such a gameplan can and will be debated, not including Suarez in the circle of trust was actually the best button of all of the ones pushed by Phillies manager Rob Thomson during their 3-0 win over the high-powered Atlanta Braves in Game 1 of the NLDS.

If you’re going to pull off such a risky plan, it needed Suarez to never see the early hook coming.

Matt Gelb of The Athletic beautifully chronicled how the plan came to fruition with five coaches deciding at a meeting on Saturday, then Thomson, methodically going around as the messenger, first to catcher J.T. Realmuto, then to the individual relievers and eventually toward the position players in the starting lineup to give them a heads up of what was coming.

The most important message was, “Don’t tell Ranger.”

He couldn’t know. There was a chance he wouldn’t have pitched as well as he did if he did know.

“One thought is, if you tell him to empty the tank early… is that the best message to send him,” Thomson asked? Or would it be better to just say, “‘Hey, just go pitch your game. Don’t worry about it and just go pitch your game?’ So, I decided not to tell him and let him pitch his game, and he pitched well.”

Suarez threw 3 2/3 innings and allowed just one hit – an infield hit at that. He was lifted for Jeff Hoffman with runners on first and second and two outs in the bottom of the fourth inning.


Suarez was visibly upset and understandably so. When you are pitching that well and get yanked from the game that quickly, you have to wonder what the hell you have to do to stay in the game.

One thing Thomson does really well is communicate with his players. After Hoffman got out of the inning, first, loading the bases by walking Marcel Ozuna and then striking out Michael Harris with the nastiest of nasty sliders, he went over to Suarez with Spanish language interpreter Diego Ettedgui and explained to him both why he had to pull him in that moment, and why he didn’t tell him of the plan.

“That was perfect,” Suarez told reporters later, through Ettedgui. “The way they did it was perfect. Because, I know myself as a competitor, it would have taken me out of my preparation or my comfort zone (if I knew). As a starting pitcher, you want to go deep in games. If I had known it was going to be a short outing, it probably would have taken some energy out of me.

Another part of the plan that Suarez wasn’t aware of was how this allowed Realmuto to call the game differently when Suarez was on the mound. Knowing Suarez’s outing was going to be short, Realmuto told Gelb that he decided to call pitches as if Ranger was a closer, and not as if he was a starter.

“We weren’t necessarily trying to save his best pitches or set guys up for a second or third at-bat. We just attacked them as we would if the game was on the line.”


The whole rationale for this plan was that for as good as the Braves lineup is, and statistically it has been historically good, they do struggle with high velocity. They set a record as a team with a slugging percentage of .501 for the entire season. That’s pretty remarkable. But, diving deeper into that number you’ll find they are even better against pitches 96MPH or slower (.512) but are less effective (.396) against pitches 97MPH or faster.

So, the Phillies’ plan was to get 16 outs throwing a lot of that upper echelon heat at the Braves. And they did.

It’s still a huge gamble, because it relies on five relievers to be completely on their game all at the same time, whereas you had a starter who was on his game and likely could have carried it further an inning or two. But, with the off-day Sunday, that tank emptying from the relievers was a thing as well. Which is why you saw a guy like Seranthony Dominguez throw 20 of his 22 pitches as fastballs, many of them in the 98-100 MPH range.

How many times already have we heard guys like Bryce Harper and Nick Castellanos talked about how the whole team is “locked in” right now. So, the internal expectation is that you are going to get the best version of your teammate every time out there this month.

Still, it’s not a plan that should be executed with any regularity. But it was one Thomson thought was worth the risk to jump on an Atlanta team that was likely to be a little rusty after having not played since last Sunday. And to his credit, it worked. It’s not certain it would work again, as the element of surprise is now gone, but, hey, the Phillies couldn’t be in a better position. Win two of the next four games with your two best pitchers throwing three of them, and you are back in the NLCS for the second year in a row.

“If it didn’t work out, it would be scrutinized,” Thomson said postgame. But it is what it is, and you gotta make the best decision in your mind that you need to make.”

And just like on Survivor, the blindside worked, and Thomson and the Phillies are one win closer to the big prize at the end of the competition.