Penny never stopped to ask, ‘What’s the deal?’

Brad Penny was too busy reeling in marlin off the coast of Mexico -- eight in all, he said -- to worry about his tenuous status as trade bait. He was having too much fun tooling around Paris and Madrid to be concerned about getting dealt to Toronto or St. Louis.

The Dodgers’ right-hander reported to camp several pounds lighter. And he shed any hard feelings he might have developed when his name continually came up in trade talks.

“My parents would tell me that my name was coming up in this trade rumor or that one, but to me it wasn’t something to worry about,” he said.

Penny didn’t take it personally that the Dodgers consider him the most expendable of their established starters.

“No one is untouchable in this game,” Penny said. “It’s part of the game, part of the business.”

Penny, 30, views his 2006 performance much the way the Dodgers front office does. He excelled in the first half and faded down the stretch.

A split-finger changeup Penny developed last spring gave him a devastating third pitch to go with his 96-mph fastball and sharp curve. But he stopped using the splitter at midseason.

“It’s hard on the arm and I shied away from it,” he said. “Then I had trouble with my curve for a while, so I was out there throwing one pitch. I could have won 20 and helped the team a lot more.”

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The stretching and conditioning program implemented by new trainer Stan Conte was familiar to Jason Schmidt, who like Conte was a longtime member of the San Francisco Giants.

Conditioning drills have been combined with stretching exercises at the beginning of practice. Previously, conditioning was done after practice.

“I’m very comfortable with it,” Schmidt said. “Conditioning is the one thing you dread this time of year, and to get it over with early is a plus.”

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The Dodgers signed catcher Kelly Stinnett to a minor league contract.

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steve.henson@latimes.com