CHICAGO — Eight seasons into his major league career hasn’t dissipated Chicago Cubs right-hander Jameson Taillon’s pregame butterflies ahead of his season debut.

A back injury interrupted his build-up process and sidelined him the entire spring exhibition schedule, causing him to begin on the injured list until Thursday. Taillon’s return gave the Cubs a boost.

“I think that’s a pretty healthy thing,” Taillon said of his nerves, “but I hadn’t felt that in a while.”

The pitching staff has played a big role in the Cubs being on the right side of .500 to start the season, even while battling injuries to notable players. Taillon gave his team exactly what they needed Friday, limiting the Miami Marlins to three hits and one run in five innings as the Cubs cruised to an 8-3 series-opening win at Wrigley Field. The lone damage Taillon allowed came on a Bryan De La Cruz homer in the fourth that landed in the left-center-field basket, a ball that would not have gone over the wall at any other major-league park, according to Statcast.

Taillon threw a first-pitch strike to 17 of the 18 batters he faced and did not issue a walk while striking out four. He kept the Marlins guessing by utilizing a balanced repertoire that featured six pitches generating 12 whiffs and 12 called strikes.

With Taillon back in the rotation, Ben Brown is expected to give the Cubs innings in relief sometime this weekend, likely Saturday during their doubleheader. Manager Craig Counsell didn’t want to look beyond this series as to how the pitching staff might shape up, but getting Taillon back helps the Cubs use their pitching depth to their advantage.

“Something that’s super exciting about our team is how deep it is,” Taillon said. “When our pitching staff’s right we’re going to fill up the zone, throw strikes, we’re going to play defense, our lineup’s going to give you tough at-bats one through nine. I’ve been on some really talented teams but our team, I don’t know if I’ve seen a deeper group of ballplayers. It’s a fun brand of baseball to watch.”

As the Cubs improved to 12-7 with Friday’s victory, the team’s resiliency through three weeks has left a strong impression on president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer. While it might sound odd, Hoyer said that in some ways two of his favorite games were their blown eight-run lead April 8 to the Padres and the extra-innings slugfest Tuesday in a loss against the Diamondbacks because of the way the Cubs played, and won, the next day’s game.

“That’s probably the part that is most exciting for me,” Hoyer said Friday. “The fact that we’ve been able to do that with some real setbacks and some real challenges and we lost some games that hurt (in San Diego and Phoenix) — those are games that sting and both times we bounced back the next day and played a really good game. To me that means a lot. We’re going to have more tough losses during the course of the year, that’s the nature of this sport and not having that linger.”

If the Cubs can get more consistency from key starters in the lineup, they could get on a roll. Nico Hoerner is showing signs of getting locked in, collecting 11 hits in his last nine games — including two Friday — with four doubles, one triple and four RBIs in that span. Cody Bellinger and Dansby Swanson also delivered multi-hit games against Friday, getting the Cubs on the board in the first inning by each driving in a run on a single and double, respectively, off starter A.J. Puk.

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