Without much fanfare, and with a completely topsy-turvy late-morning broadcast, the 2024 MLB season began today. While I like these international series that lead off the year, and they've been doing them for like 15 years or so, it's always weird when they do an official start to the season that's weeks before the actual predetermined 'Opening Day'. Like you get to Opening Day and there's just regular season stats just sitting there, and the people on TV are ignoring them. 'How will the 2024 season kick off?', well you know how it kicked off, you were just there in Seoul.
And so now, in the midst of Spring Training and with several storylines yet to completely elapse before the start of the season, the 2024 season is...starting, simultaneously. I mean I'm fine with it if it produces games like the one we just witnessed, but...it's like watching a movie on your phone as you're waiting for the trailers to end for another movie in the movie theater.
Right, anyway. Seoul series. They picked 2 great teams to do the Seoul series this year. It's not like the Brazil game the NFL is trying to do where they were able to get one good team and then had to wrangle the Browns to do it cause Dallas couldn't be bothered. They got not only 2 great, competitive teams, but teams with ties to asian culture. The Dodgers obviously have the storyline of Shohei Ohtani joining the club and bringing fellow Team Japan standout Yoshinobu Yamamoto along with him, and the Padres not only have Yu Darvish and newcomer Yuki Matsui from Japan, but former KBO star Ha-Seong Kim in a prominent role.
It's fascinating the stage of 2020s Padres baseball this Seoul series has landed on, because this is a moment where, ironically, Ha-Seong Kim is one of the most valuable players on the Padres. In the last two seasons, regardless of the Padres' recent struggles, Kim has been solid throughout, with a combined 10.7 WAR in that period. For comparison's sake, Manny Machado has a 9.6 combined WAR in this period. Nobody on these Padres teams has been more impressive in a multiple-tool way than Ha-Seong Kim, and this is the guy the Padres brought on with the tone of 'ehh, don't know if we'll start him, he'll mostly back up Tatis, who knows'. And now he's the starting shortstop and nobody's touching him.
Then again, Kim being one of the stars of this team does indicate the direction the Padres have been going in the last year or so. Soto, Grisham, Hader, Snell and Sanchez are all gone. The free agents aren't exactly flocking to San Diego anymore because they don't have a deadline to win now anymore. Some of the starters in this game earlier today included Luis Campusano, former third string catcher, Tyler Wade, former backup infielder for the Scranton-Wilkes Barre Railriders, and genuine right-out-of-camp rookie Jackson Merrill, who proceeded to not get any hits. Both the hold and the loss went to former Yankees. Jurickson Profar's return is less of a 'return to greatness' move and more of a 'please come back so we can remind people of how good we were a year and a half ago' move.
Even if Kim was hitless in Game 1, he will be relied upon this year more than ever, because there are less surefire standouts on this Padres team, and because he's been one of the only sources of consistency in the past two seasons. If Kim, still in the midst of his peak years, can't keep producing, it'll be a grim sign for this team.
Still, these Seoul games are really exciting, and it's a nice way to whet the appetite for more games that count.
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