MESA, Ariz. — Cubs right-hander Jameson Taillon never stopped throwing after the 2024 season.

He wasn’t pitching off a mound in October or anything like that, but he kept playing catch. It was part of trying something new this offseason, even after he shortened his time off the year before to a month.

‘‘I’ve just found the older I get, the more time I take off, the worse I feel,’’ Taillon said Tuesday. ‘‘So it’s good to just keep it moving.’’

The adjustment flowed smoothly into the program the Cubs had designed for him. Because they’re playing in the Tokyo Series on March 18-19 against the Dodgers, the Cubs moved up their pitchers’ offseason work. They needed to make sure they would have enough arms ready to compete in those two games, which count toward the regular season.

At the same time, the rise in pitcher injuries has been an MLB-wide concern. Accelerating pitchers’ offseason programs for Tokyo wouldn’t make sense if it made the risk of injury greater.

‘‘We did a lot of research internally,’’ pitching coach Tommy Hottovy said. ‘‘Not just me, but people way smarter than me, doing some really cool digging on how much time it takes for tissue to adapt in the offseason, to repair; how we can do that without just completely shutting down and losing workload.’’

The Cubs gave pitchers a heads-up about the unique timing of the offseason in exit interviews last fall, then had them do things such as throwing around a football.

‘‘Tried to stay active, so that when we hit that ramp back up, we were at a full zero,’’ Hottovy said. ‘‘We were hovering slightly above that. That was going to allow us to shrink that timeline just a hair.’’

With the extra work done on the front end, the Cubs plan to run the next four weeks of camp as usual, albeit with earlier reporting dates.

There’s a nine-day difference between the first game of the Tokyo Series and Opening Day in the U.S., but Cubs starters don’t necessarily have to be fully stretched out.

When the Dodgers and Padres played in South Korea around the same time last season, the most pitches anyone threw was 77 by the Dodgers’ Tyler Glasnow. In that same game, the Padres’ Yu Darvish threw 72. But in Game 2, the Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto, making his MLB debut, threw only 43.

The Cubs will have plenty of days off on either side of the Tokyo Series to line up their pitching plan.

‘‘We have the ability to adjust based off how guys are feeling, how they’re recovering,’’ Hottovy said. ‘‘So I think there’s a lot of ways we can go. I also think there’s opportunities to have multiple starters in the game if we want to piggyback guys. Because it’s such a unique situation, the sky’s the limit with how we want to put that together.’’

It’ll be a unique experience, too.

‘‘I want to go over there and play good ball,’’ Taillon said. ‘‘And whether it’s an exhibition or in a game, I really want to pitch in the Tokyo Dome. I think it’d be pretty cool to say you’ve done that.’’

Taillon, a coffee connoisseur and a collector of Pokemon cards, said he already has started scouting his spots for both. Left-hander Shota Imanaga, who is set to start one of the Tokyo Series games, and outfielder Seiya Suzuki plan to throw a team get-together.

‘‘It’s going to be an incredible trip,’’ manager Craig Counsell said. ‘‘It’s going to be an incredible cultural trip for us. It’s an incredible team-building trip for us. And it’s an incredible baseball experience for our guys.

‘‘So in all measures, we are fortunate that we get to do this trip.’’