To be clear, baseball comes first for Taillon and the Cubs on this work trip to Tokyo. They play a pair of exhibition games – Taillon is scheduled to start the second, against the Yomiuri Giants – and then open the regular season with two games against the Dodgers.

Yesterday the Dodgers announced that pitchers Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki would start the two-game series against the Cubs in Tokyo. Yamamoto, from Okayama, and Sasaki, from Rikuzentakata are both from Japan and both came to the States as high-profile international free agents.

Chicago Cubs prospect Matt Shaw has been one of the more exciting young players in the organization’s system, and although he has not made his MLB debut yet, manager Craig Counsell said that he will be traveling with the team for the games in Japan against the Los Angeles Dodgers on March 18-19.