'Electric.' 'Sick.' 'Awesome.' On verge of the bigs, Merrill having a blast in Seoul

SEOUL, South Korea -- In the aftermath of the Padres’ offense being held to one run and four hits by the Korean national team in San Diego's 1-0 victory on Sunday night local time, San Diego skipper Mike Shildt remarked that he “actually didn’t mind” that, given that his team was playing in a very new atmosphere with guys likely trying to do too much.

Well, except one guy -- and wouldn’t you know it, the guy who cashed in on some adjustments happens to be the 20-year-old nearing the end of his quest to crack the team at a position he’s never played.

? Everything you need to know about the Seoul Series

Seemingly nothing has fazed Jackson Merrill this spring -- not the roster battle, not being a shortstop thrown into center field and, evidently, not this whole new environment 6,000 miles away from home with Korean fans chanting, singing and dancing around him all game.

“Being here in Seoul, it's an honor,” Merrill said in a postgame interview on Padres.TV. “I'm very thankful that the people of Korea are allowing us to play here. It's pretty sick.”

It’s a nice gesture to thank the people of Korea for hosting the Padres, to be sure, but Merrill, the game’s No. 12 overall prospect, really earned every bit of his place here, and with every passing day, even with his spot on the Opening Day roster seemingly more and more secure, he just keeps pushing, most recently with two singles and a stolen base in Sunday’s exhibition.

Oh, and he has a “real” jersey number now, too, with the team having swapped in his Spring Training No. 70 for a No. 3 jersey here in Korea -- in case anyone needed any more indication of what might be coming for Merrill in a matter of days.

"I don't really think anything different of it,” he said. “They just kind of gave me that number. I didn't really complain about it. I didn't really ask for a smaller number or anything. It's just what they gave me.”

Merrill will continue to prepare for the center-field job that looks to be his for the taking in the coming days, with this series, for example, being pointed to as an opportunity for him to get used to another new circumstance, like tracking fly balls under the white domed roof of the Gocheok Sky Dome.

“I think just getting new experiences, seeing things for the first time, playing in a different country, domed stadium, that can only help for down the road in terms of him being prepared for hopefully what's to come here as we go through the next few months,” said president of baseball operations A.J. Preller.

In the meantime, he continues to hit, with a popout turning into a line-drive single to left in the fourth inning and a knock up the middle in the seventh.

“We don't want to take that for granted,” manager Mike Shildt said. “We don't want to minimize anybody that makes adjustments in a game that is adjustment-based. We talk about getting better as the game goes, and he did a nice job just taking what the game gives you.”

Looking ahead, these are rather unique circumstances for anyone set to make a potential MLB debut. Instead of the plethora of family, friends and acquaintances who are usually on hand for that special event, it’ll be a sea of Korean fans around him -- as well as his girlfriend, who made the trip.

His parents aren’t in South Korea, but they’ll see him in due time, he says.

“I don't really think anything of it,” Merrill said. “I think they'll come out to San Diego if I do make the team, and they'll come see me Opening Day in San Diego.”

Despite all this, the official stance of the organization is that the decision still hasn’t been made.

“We're still looking at it and evaluating,” Shildt said of his roster decisions. “Clearly, we've got some decisions to make relative to the roster. So we've got a pretty good handle on it. Don't want people to feel like, ‘Aw, man, I've got to do something great today.’”

Not that Merrill ever seems to feel that kind of pressure anyway.

“It was electric,” Merrill said. “That was probably the most fun I've had playing baseball in a while. That was pretty awesome.”