LAKELAND, Fla. -- If he stays healthy, Drew Smyly will make more starts and pitch more innings than he ever has before.

But Smyly isn't going to make 35 starts. He's not going to pitch 200 innings. No matter how good he is this season, the Detroit Tigers are not going to wear his arm out.

"We know we're going to watch him," general manager Dave Dombrowski said Sunday afternoon. "You're not just going to throw him out there every fifth day for 125 pitches and seven or eight innings every single time, but we haven't gotten into specifics on it."

In recent years, the Tigers have ridden their top four starters and skipped Rick Porcello when off-days and logic dictated that they do so. Expect Smyly to receive that treatment in 2014.

"Not just Drew, but any pitcher who isn’t recently accustomed to being a starter, there are plenty of opportunities to skip a start, bump them an extra day," Ausmus said. "That in turn pushes their pitch count and number of innings down."

Smyly isn't the least bit worried about how the situation plays out.

"I have no idea," he said. "That's up to them. Obviously, you have to be smart about it. My only goal is to stay healthy and make every start they ask me to make."

Smyly arguably was the team's most effective relief pitcher during the 2013 season and finished 6-0 with a 2.37 ERA and a 1.039 WHIP in 63 games. He struck out 81 batters in 76 innings out of the bullpen.

But Smyly pitched effectively as a starter during the 2012 season after he emerged from a group of young pitchers to win the role as the fifth starter coming out of spring training that season. He went 4-3 with a 3.79 ERA and a 1.211 WHIP in 18 starts. His season was interrupted by a blister problem on his throwing hand and an intercostal injury, and he was moved to the bullpen when the Tigers traded for Anibal Sanchez.

Smyly threw 117 innings between the majors and minors in the 2012 season for a total of 193 over the course of the past two seasons. The Tigers drafted him as a starting pitcher, and he threw 126 innings in 22 games (21 starts) for Single-A Lakeland and Double-A Erie in 2011, his first year of professional ball.

"We only talked in generalities about it," Dombrowski said. "We haven't sat down and set any specific plan. But we'll be careful with him in the sense that he's making the transition back to starting. He has been a starter, though, in the past, so he has put some innings up in the past.

At this point, it doesn't appear that the Tigers will set a hard and fast innings limit on Smyly, but they obviously are going to be careful with the 24-year-old left-hander.

"Other than being very aware of where he is and trying to forecast the future in terms of where we want him in August and September," Ausmus said, "we haven’t put a number on it."

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