MESA, Ariz. -- Still shaking off changing hemispheres after returning from the Tokyo Series on Thursday, most of the Cubs’ regulars got Friday off when the club returned to Cactus League play. But manager Craig Counsell wasn’t about to sit this one out.

“I was too excited to see Nico play,” he said.

Nico Hoerner made his Cactus League debut on Friday against the Padres after spending the spring rehabbing the right forearm he had surgically repaired in October. The second baseman had to miss the Japan trip, but he used that time to ramp up his at-bats on the Minor League side and Counsell is confident he’s on track to start the domestic opener against the D-backs on Thursday.

“He’s passed all the tests so far,” Counsell said. “The seven or eight days that we were gone were good for him to just be consistent with his work and do a little more each day, and now we’re ready to go.”

Hoerner went 0-for-3 in his spring debut – a 5-1 loss to the Padres – with a pair of flyouts and a sharp groundout to shortstop. He only got one chance on defense, but he was happy to finally get back to work in front of a packed house at Sloan Park.

“It’s always amazing how many people come out in spring and support us,” he said. “It was a good time.”

He was disappointed to miss the Japan trip, but knew it was the right move to get him ready for the Cubs’ other 160 games.

“It was never really a goal from the start of surgery to be ready for that,” he said. “It would have been a pretty aggressive timeline to make that happen, and it’s not worth risking being ready for the season.”

Hoerner said there are still some hurdles to clear over the final four days of exhibition games before he gets the official green light to start the stateside opener, but he’s confident that will happen.

“You gotta get your arm ready, but also your legs and your swing and your whole game,” he said. “And fortunately I’m not too behind on that either and should be in a good spot to play.”

Veteran Jon Berti filled in at second base in the Tokyo Series and performed well, going 3-for-6 out of the nine-hole, but getting Hoerner back will be a big boost for a lineup looking to shake off going 0-2 with four total runs in Japan.

Hoerner, in the second year of a three-year, $35 million extension, has been one of the Cubs’ most valuable players the last two seasons. He had a 12.8 WAR (per FanGraphs) from 2022-24 with 26 homers and 94 stolen bases. Defensively, he recorded plus-38 Outs Above Average in that stretch, the eighth-best in the Majors, winning a Gold Glove in ‘23.

Back in the States

Counsell said he’ll start sprinkling in the Cubs’ regulars back into the lineup starting Saturday, with four or five innings of action for position players. The manager said there’s no playbook on how to adjust an athlete for such a dramatic change to their body clock.

“It’s going to be an individual thing,” he said. “I think by Thursday [we’ll be back to normal] – that’s the day we’re worried about – that’s the day we’re pushing for. That’s the day that matters. The rest of the days we’ll kind of let everybody recover on a case-by-case basis, and everybody has to listen to their bodies.”

Aside from the time change, the Cubs face the challenge of going from regular-season mode, to exhibition mode and back to regular-season mode all in an eight-day span.

“From a position-player perspective, you’re using [the exhibition games] as just maintaining your conditioning, maintain your seeing live pitching,” Counsell said. “From a pitcher’s perspective, the difficulty of the Japan trip is that we have so many off-days in that trip, and that’s not normal for Spring Training and that hurts some of their preparation, frankly. …

“Coming off the trip, we’re more worried about our pitching, for sure. I think it’ll affect decisions the first week of the season. I think my starters will be a little bit behind some other teams’ starters, so we’ll see what we have to do there.”