MESA, Ariz. — Chicago Cubs manager Craig Counsell is totally confident in the team’s pitching plans and completely paranoid about what could go wrong. “You feel both at the same time,” he said, because that’s how Major League Baseball works in 2025. Every team is one pitch away from panic.

The New York Yankees are bracing for bad news after Gerrit Cole underwent diagnostic testing on his right elbow. The Seattle Mariners, renowned for pitching development, shut down George Kirby with right shoulder inflammation. The New York Mets, even with the backing of Steve Cohen’s money, will still start the season with Sean Manaea and Frankie Montas on the injured list.

The Cubs began preparing for Opening Day 2025 near the end of last season. Exit interviews looked ahead to the Tokyo Series. The organization studied ways to ramp up pitchers while pursuing a targeted offseason strategy, an extension of the research and development that has shaped a major overhaul of the pitching department in recent years.

No one is saying the Cubs have all the answers. Things could change dramatically by the time the team’s traveling party leaves for Japan on Tuesday, and the pitching staff will still have to cover roughly 1,400 innings after those first two games against the Los Angeles Dodgers. At the moment, though, there is cautious optimism.

“There’s risk at this time of year with pitchers,” Counsell said Saturday at the Sloan Park training complex. “Historically, the injuries have told you that. That just instructs you with how much we’re going to push guys in terms of appearances and length. I’m really proud of our pitching group and our pitchers and how they’ve prepared. Our staff has done a wonderful job — really before we even got here — with getting us to this point. It was a great exercise, and I think we’re going to learn from it.”

Working backward from March 18-19 on a different continent — while factoring in the rest of a regular season that resumes March 27 in Arizona — presents challenges. On the second day of spring training, Counsell announced Javier Assad was sidelined with oblique soreness and would be reassessed after an MRI, a potential omen for how this camp might go.

Instead, the Cubs still have two All-Stars, Shota Imanaga and Justin Steele, lined up to face the Dodgers at the Tokyo Dome. Two more established pitchers, Jameson Taillon and Matthew Boyd, remain on track. Jed Hoyer’s front office also created competition around Assad, a likely No. 5 starter, and worked ahead on the Japan project.

“The biggest thing was just kind of speeding up the clock in the offseason,” Boyd said, crediting pitching coach Tommy Hottovy, assistant pitching coach Casey Jacobson and special assistant Tyler Zombro for their diligence. “They did a great job of laying out the throwing program: ‘If we speed this up a few weeks, this is how it would look. These are checkpoints you should hit.’ That attention to detail was really helpful.”

The Cubs signed Boyd to a two-year, $29 million contract shortly after Thanksgiving, believing in his standout performance with the Cleveland Guardians after Tommy John surgery, which included three playoff starts and a run to the American League Championship Series.

The Cubs also layered more depth and flexibility into their 40-man roster. Colin Rea, who threw nearly 300 innings for the Milwaukee Brewers over the past two seasons, got a $5 million deal to be a swingman. Ben Brown has flashed top-of-the-rotation stuff, but he might stay stretched out as a starter at Triple-A Iowa at the beginning of the season, in part because the Cubs remade their bullpen with more experienced relievers.

In another era of Cubs baseball, fans also might have been hyped up for Jordan Wicks and Cade Horton, and reporters could have turned those recent first-round picks into bigger stories. Instead, the organization has accumulated enough arms that Wicks and Horton can refine their games in the minors rather than get rushed to Wrigley Field.

The Cubs also had to get creative due to a middle-of-the-pack budget for baseball operations. Corbin Burnes, who would eventually sign a six-year, $210 million contract with the Arizona Diamondbacks, was essentially ruled out as a free-agent target at the start of the offseason. The market for pitching heated up so much that Walker Buehler commanded $21 million on a one-year deal with the Boston Red Sox, eliminating one bounce-back candidate.

There were other missed opportunities. Chicago’s trade talks with the Miami Marlins around Jesús Luzardo ultimately fell apart. Roki Sasaki met with Cubs officials in Los Angeles before predictably signing with the Dodgers. Nevertheless, this is still a team that expects to be playing in October. The disappointment from back-to-back 83-win seasons — combined with the accelerated preparations for Opening Day — infused this camp with more intent.

“It’s healthy to have a sense of urgency,” Taillon said. “It’s OK to voice expectations. We have a really good group of guys. It’s time for us to put that on the field and make a run in the playoffs.”