7 Seoul Series takeaways, from Merrill to Machado

This story was excerpted from AJ Cassavell's Padres Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

What a wild couple of games in Seoul.

At the end of it all -- after they won a 15-11 slugfest over the Dodgers on Thursday at the Gocheok Sky Dome -- the Padres boarded their flight back across the Pacific with a series split.

Here are seven thoughts on those two games:

1. It's really quite an environment to ask a 20-year-old to make his big league debut in. Except that Jackson Merrill didn’t look at all like a 20-year-old who was making his big league debut. Merrill was solid in center field, and he picked up his first career hit on Thursday -- then narrowly missed his first home run, finishing 2-for-5 with a double and two runs scored. Merrill joins Tarrik Brock (2000, Cubs) and Yoenis Céspedes (‘13, A’s) as the only players to pick up their first MLB hit outside North America, per the Elias Sports Bureau. (Both Brock and Céspedes did so at the Tokyo Dome.)

2. I'm definitely not reading too deeply into the way skipper Mike Shildt managed these games. Save that for next month. Shildt was uber-aggressive with his bullpen, to the point where it burned him in the eighth inning on Wednesday and nearly did so again on Thursday. But why not be aggressive there? These are two standalone games with seven days until the next regular-season contest. There’s plenty of time for the bullpen to recover, and the starters clearly weren’t fully built up. You might as well use your high-leverage arms as often (and as early) as possible.

3. Josh Hader is an incredible closer, maybe the best in the sport. But, man, is it useful if Robert Suarez can cover four outs regularly. With Thursday’s game teetering, Shildt asked Suarez for a four-out save, and the right-hander delivered. After Mookie Betts’ seeing-eye single cut the Padres’ lead to 12-11 in the eighth, Suarez escaped the inning by getting Shohei Ohtani to bounce to first, then he worked a 1-2-3 ninth.

4. The Padres aren’t going to rush Manny Machado back to third base, nor should they. But it’s going to be very useful when they can write him into their lineup at the hot corner again. Right now, that spot is the biggest question mark in the lineup. Tyler Wade was solid in a couple starts, but he is much better suited as a versatile bench piece. Plus, if San Diego can use the DH spot to mix and match and perhaps get someone like Graham Pauley more regular at-bats, it’d make the club’s offense that much more potent.

5. I wrote that batting Jake Cronenworth in the No. 3 spot would give him a slew of favorable matchups. On Thursday, he capitalized, going 4-for-4 with four RBIs and two runs scored. It’s going to be awfully rare that Cronenworth sees a left-hander late in a game, given that he’s hitting in the middle of four very good righty hitters. In the one case that he did face a southpaw reliever (Ryan Yarbrough in the seventh inning), Cronenworth shot a single through the 5.5 hole.

6. If Luis Campusano hits like this, the Padres are going to have a problem -- one of those proverbial “good problems to have,” but a problem that needs solving, nonetheless. Campusano posted a .331/.375/.500 slash line in 42 games in the second half last season. He went 3-for-6 with a pair of RBIs and a couple of runs on Thursday. There’s no reason to think Campusano can’t be one of the best hitting catchers in the sport. But he has never caught more than 77 games in a season at any level of pro ball. The Padres need to keep him fresh and healthy. Perhaps that’s where some of that DH flexibility might come into play.

7. Who really cares if Ha-Seong Kim went hitless in the Seoul Series? It was still such a cool week for one of the most beloved Padres -- from his two homers in Monday’s exhibition to the ovations he received at the Gocheok Sky Dome to the gifts he presented his teammates with. Kim will never say it, but I’m sure it was a lot to be at the center of all that. Here’s guessing he’ll settle in at the plate with a bit more normalcy next week.