Nomo’s Pain Finally Causes Team to Wince

So the Dodgers have finally, blessedly, mercifully, humanitarianly benched Hideo Nomo.

So what finally convinced them?

The fact that he had not won a game in 70 days?

The fact that, during that time, when he was on the mound, the Dodgers had gone 1-9 and been outscored 67-27?

Was it that, among 518 players who had thrown a pitch in the big leagues this season, his 8.06 earned-run average ranked 463rd?

Or that, among all players with at least 60 innings pitched, his ERA ranked last?

Talk about beating a dead workhorse.

The numbers are numbing, and so, for the second consecutive year, has been the Dodgers’ desperate treatment of an obviously injured player.

Last year it was Shawn Green, struggling all year with a bum shoulder that required surgery, taking a bullet for a team afraid to pull him from the lineup.

This year it’s Nomo, struggling from the moment he walked into Vero Beach this spring until the moment he walked off the mound at Chavez Ravine this week, from spring to summer to absurd.

He was so bad, scouts winced, opponents frothed, and even New York Yankee rookie pitcher Brad Halsey recently criticized his fastball after hitting one for a single in his first at-bat since high school.

Nomo was put on the disabled list Thursday without a doctor’s examination, without an MRI test, with nothing but Jim Tracy’s pained shrug.

“To send a guy out there like this is totally unfair,” said the manager. “It’s like sending a soldier to war without a weapon.”

Or, in this case, an inflamed rotator cuff, which means Nomo never really recovered from off-season shoulder surgery, and exactly how long has he been pitching in this condition?

“Nothing really changed,” he said Thursday through an interpreter, which means, all season.

That the Dodgers thought they had no choice but to keep using him reveals much about where they are, and where they might be going, and it’s not much different from the last half-dozen years.

They are in a spot where, still, four general managers and countless promises after Fred Claire, they still have no organizational pitching depth.

You think that if there was a triple-A arm that could have helped them immediately, Nomo would have lasted past May?

You think if they had any surplus major league pitching hanging around, they would have been more than witnesses to the recent Carlos Beltran trade?

“I still believe we are buyers,” General Manager Paul DePodesta said.

Yeah, with Wal-Mart eyes and lint-filled pockets.

As the bruised and puffy-eyed Nomo can attest, the Dodgers are going to have to fight -- not buy -- their way into the playoffs.

They’re going to have to scramble as they did Thursday in their 5-4 comeback win over the San Francisco Giants in front of another full house at Dodger Stadium.

They’re going to have to use their patience, as Milton Bradley did in coaxing a walk from reliever Felix Rodriguez in the eighth.

And their legs, as Bradley did in running with Shawn Green at the plate.

And their money man, with Green lining a pitch into left-center field to score Bradley with the winning run on the play.

Green, who homered in the previous inning, had two RBIs in the same game for only the second time in a month.

“I think this is a turning point for him,” said Dave Roberts, and one would hope so.

Finally, of course, the Dodgers are going to have to use that wonderful bullpen, another 2 2/3 scoreless innings, the major-league’s best ERA, and the creator of what is currently the best 10 minutes in sports.

The Eric Gagne scene has become so surreal, with the cheering and the music and the strikeouts, that during one recent broadcast, Vin Scully simply stopped talking and allowed the crowd to tell the story.

“We’re going to have to do all kinds of little things like tonight,” said Jose Lima, the starting pitcher who gave up a homer to Barry Bonds and lived to talk about it. “We’re going to have to stick together. I really think we can win this thing.”

If they do, it will be on broken wings and prayers.

Nomo will be replaced in the rotation by, well, this gets complicated.

Edwin Jackson, a disappointment in Las Vegas with a 5.29 ERA, will pitch this weekend in sore-shouldered Odalis Perez’s spot.

Then, if Perez still can’t pitch next week in Nomo’s spot, maybe Wilson Alvarez returns from the bullpen.

Yeah, the same Alvarez who wearily asked to be removed from the starting rotation this season by saying, “I’m not 25 anymore.”

Guess what, pal. Neither is anybody else who still remembers a Dodger championship. Eighty-six rounds left. Lace ‘em up.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. For previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.