If you had asked Jed Hoyer in December if he thought Nico Hoerner would be ready to go for the Chicago Cubs’ domestic opener in Arizona in late March, he probably would have been pessimistic.

After all, Hoerner underwent flexor tendon surgery in the offseason.

“I don’t think we really know,” the president of baseball operations told reporters before Thursday’s contest against the Diamondbacks. “Sometimes you guys think we’re being coy like I don’t think we really had a sense of what the return would be.

“The hope would have been today.”

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Hoerner was in the lineup against Arizona, hitting sixth and manning second base, a welcome sign to a team that restarted their season in an 0-2 hole, while the rest of the league kicked off their year. His return brings elite, Gold Glove-caliber defense in the middle of the infield, while his contact-first bat in the middle of the lineup adds a different element to the Cubs’ offense.

But that doesn’t mean he’s totally in the clear, either. The Cubs will play it safe with the 27-year-old, knowing his importance to the team beyond game three of the season.

“Obviously, he’s not 100%,” Hoyer said. “I think we’ll probably have to get him a little bit of rest early in the season, but it’s awesome to have him back today, and he’s a big part of our team.”

Hoerner knows that, too. Yes, he wants to play every day, but the team has lofty goals and over-extending himself now could hurt that.

“We’ll go day-by-day with it,” Hoerner told Taylor McGregor on Cubs Live! before the game. “I think I’m in a place where, unless something changes, I’m gonna wanna be in there every day just like normal, but also, that’s why you have people that have done it a long time and maybe held me back at the right times in a good way.

“We’re all on the same page. The goal is to win, win the division, win from there on and we’re in a good place to do that.”