Penny Would Do in a Pinch

So this is what it has come to, on these final sticky days of summer, a team of sturdy hands and giant shoulders desperately searching for an arm.

A season of oohs and aahs reduced to grunts.

Grunt!

Brad Penny throws a fastball through the thick afternoon air, past a teammate flailing in a batting cage, into a catcher’s mitt that shouts back.

Grunt!

Penny throws another fastball, harder spin, louder grunt, to another batter who looks like he’s swinging a wet newspaper.

Behind the batting cage, the Dodger general manager has emerged from his Stat Cave to sweat.

“Every time he grunted, I sort of wondered ... but it’s all good,” says Paul DePodesta.

Over in the dugout, the Dodger manager has left his office early to scheme.

“We’ll do one more of these, see how we’re doing,” Jim Tracy says.

Back in the clubhouse later, the relieved pitcher smiles.

“It felt good, I’m fine,” said Penny. “I’m excited. I hope to move forward soon.”

In his first serious work since injuring a nerve in his arm Aug. 8, Penny threw 55 strong pitches Tuesday, reached 93 mph on the radar gun, looked good enough to be inserted into the rotation, hmm ...

Now, we don’t want to rush him ...

How about yesterday?

“We could use him,” says pitching coach Jim Colborn, with a grin of someone whose ring collection depends on it.

After turning this season around on a dime, the Dodgers’ finish is all about a Penny, as surely as every column written about him until then will contain at least one bad coin metaphor.

If he returns in time to start in the postseason, the Dodgers have a chance to play until the leaves turn.

If he doesn’t, they could be done before the first chill.

“He is a critical piece,” says DePodesta. “You get a big No. 1 going for you, everything else can fall into place.”

He could be back by next week, maybe coming out of the bullpen in San Diego, perhaps even starting by next weekend in San Francisco.

He must be back by the end of the regular season Oct. 3, or we won’t see him again until February in Vero Beach, Fla.

Allowing a pitcher to make a first post-injury start in the playoffs is like showing up in Yankee Stadium in October in shorts.

“It wouldn’t be fair to him or the team,” said Colborn. “It’s not good stuff.”

And simply awful stuff for the general manager, who could be faced with filling out a playoff roster that does not contain either of the two main players he acquired from the Florida Marlins in the controversial -- I still say misguided -- trade for Paul Lo Duca and Guillermo Mota.

No Penny, no Hee-Seop Choi, no rest this winter.

“But what is happening with the rotation now shows what we were trying to do with that trade,” says DePodesta, never backing down from the hard questions. “This is what we were trying to guard against by getting Brad.”

If Penny comes back, they are better by the length of his old-fashioned high socks.

With the grunting guy in the postseason, the Dodgers have that rare pitcher capable of both creating and collapsing postseason momentum.

Penny is the sort of pitcher who can knock an opponent silly in a series opener, staggering them for a week. As a member of the Florida Marlins, he stunned the New York Yankees in Game 1 of the World Series last fall.

He’s also the sort of pitcher who is strong enough to stall a storm. In his first start with the Dodgers after the controversial trade this summer, he allowed the Pittsburgh Pirates two hits in eight innings in a victory.

Have the Dodgers had a starter last more than a couple of innings since?

Without Penny, the Dodgers’ postseason starting rotation is Jeff Weaver, Odalis Perez and Jose Lima ... none of whom is holding batters to less than a .250 average, none of whom has a complete game this year, and none of whom has a postseason victory as a starter.

Not to mention, they are the leaders of a starting staff that has allowed the opponents to score first in more than half (81) of its games this year.

Comebacks and curtain calls and game overs are fun during the regular season. But after that, it’s all about pitching and defense.

As long as Adrian Beltre cuts out the silly basket catches that cost the Dodgers a run in Tuesday’s 6-3 victory over San Diego, the Dodgers have the defense.

That would leave it up to pitching, or, in the Dodgers’ case, starting pitching -- just check the history books.

No, it wasn’t destiny that gave the Dodgers their unlikely wings during the 1988 world championship over Oakland, it was the unhittable Orel Hershiser.

Yes, it was three position players who shared MVP honors in the 1981 World Series against the Yankees, but it was Fernando Valenzuela’s brilliant nine-inning survival in Game 3 that changed everything.

Remember Sandy Koufax throwing two shutouts on two days’ rest to win the title from Minnesota in 1965?

How about the a Dodger rotation that was so strong in 1963, a reliever was used for only one-third of an inning during the four-game sweep of the Yankees?

Fast forward 41 years, to a team loaded for the same sort of glorious finishes, a team waiting for the one guy who can get them started.

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

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Inning Eater

A return to health by Brad Penny could be a boon to the Dodgers’ pitching staff. Throughout his short career, he has had a penchant for getting into the later innings of games he’s started. His record of innings per game:

*--* Year G IP IPG 2000 23 119.2 5.20 2001 31 205.0 6.61 2002 24 129.1 5.39 2003 32 196.1 6.14 2004 23 140.0 6.09 Totals 133 790.1 5.94

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