SURPRISE, Ariz. - While continuing to rave about right-hander Yu Darvish's recovery from Tommy John surgery, pitching coach Doug Brocail said he didn't think the club would be forced to put a limit on Darvish's workload this season.

If Darvish returns between mid-May and early June as scheduled, he could get about 20 starts during the regular season, which Brocail estimated would eat up about 120-130 innings. Add in the postseason and it's unlikely he'd pass 150. It is, however, one of the reasons the Rangers are going to deliberately with Darvish. Better to have him miss starts early than late.

"If you get all those innings early, what do you do to manage them late," Brocail said.

Despite Darvish's sharpness, Brocail said he did not see an alteration in the scheduled return time for Darvish. The Rangers still don't have a scheduled date for when Darvish will face hitters for the first time. He threw 25 pitches on Thursday. He must work up to 50 or so before facing a hitter.

Darvish is progressing so well, though, that Brocail is prepared for that to happen sooner rather than later.

"The biggest surprise for me is how advanced he is," Brocail said. "Pretty soon, he's going to change the time line on us and there will be nothing we can do about it. When he's ready to go to the next step, we're going to have to be good with that."

Despite that, Brocail said he did not see any changes to the ultimate schedule for when Darvish returns to the Rangers' rotation.