While talking at Zachary Levine's Excellent Adventure to Corpus.
On Bud Norris' workload:
He's more seasoned, he's more mature, and I don't think it's a consideration there like it would be if he were in Lexington in his first year. We are trying to monitor the work load there, because it's such a transition for players in their first and second years of full years of service.
On the importance of pitch counts:
Today, of course, we're monitoring pitch counts and after five or six innings, you're out of there. I think to some degree you have to guard against that so that when pitchers get to the big leagues, they don't automatically start to look toward the bench whenever they run into trouble or whenever they think maybe "I've done my job; time to turn it over to somebody else."
I think that whole thing needs to be re-examined and continually examined, and we're doing that. We aren't as quick to just have an automatic pitch count. It depends on the pitcher and whether he's laboring or not. You've got to trust your judgment. Obviously you don't want to put anybody at risk, and I don't think we do. But sometimes I think we're overly cautious.
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
