If Dodgers are to succeed, Penny can’t be all the rage

Brad Penny stalks out of the shower, across the near-empty clubhouse, toward his cluttered locker, when he spies a visitor.

I am holding a notebook, but it must look like I am holding a bat, because Penny spins and begins throwing fastballs.

“Why do you want to talk to me?” he says.

What do you mean?

“Last summer you wrote all kinds of bad things about me.”

And?

“And I believe you wanted me out of here, right?”

Right.

“So if you wanted me out of here, why do you want to talk to me now?”

He is bringing not only the heat, but the anger, both of which drove him into a ditch last summer, turning the Dodgers’ best pitcher into their most troubled, a question mark surrounded by exclamation points that are now growing, and growing, and ...

He stops. He smiles. He motions to a nearby chair.

“You know, I’m really working to turn things around this year,” he says. “Let’s talk.”

If this is the Penny the Dodgers will be banking on this summer, they will be very rich indeed.

Snarling, but composed. Tough, but reasonable.

If Penny reverts to antics that might have cost the Dodgers a shot at last year’s World Series, well, like I said, get him out of here.

“I don’t want to leave,” Penny said. “I want to finish what I started here.”

That’s been his problem here. He has started, but never finished.

He has started games as a gentle giant, and ended in a rage. He has started seasons as a dominant fastball pitcher, and ended in a puddle. He started last year’s All-Star game, and ended the playoffs in the bullpen.

If Penny can physically and emotionally finish this season, the Dodgers could be playing until late October. If he does not, they could both be done.

Nobody can take this team higher. But nobody can blow it up quicker.

“Brad knows what is expected of him and he said he could live up to that,” Dodgers General Manager Ned Colletti said. “I’ll take him at his word.”

Penny has been using several words this spring.

Remorse.

He says he is sorry for each of last year’s three infamous temper tantrums, and he has vowed to avoid them this year.

“I let my emotions get the best of me, I was frustrated, it was horrible, I felt terrible,” says Penny, 28. “But I’m older now. I’ve got to handle myself better now. And I will. That’s my goal.”

He said he has not received anger management treatment, only doses of common sense.

He says he knows that when he screamed at Manager Grady Little and pitching coach Rick Honeycutt after being taken out of a game last May in Atlanta, he was undermining their authority and distracting the team.

“I talked to Grady this winter and told him that would never happen again,” Penny says.

He knows that when he screamed at the umpires before being ejected during a lousy performance in San Diego in June, he was fighting a battle he couldn’t win.

“Umpires make mistakes, but so do I,” he says. “I want them to know that I am done arguing with them.”

And he knows that when he accosted Kenny Lofton in August after a misplayed fly ball against the Padres, he was breaking rule No. 1.

“I apologized to him right away, and I told the other guys that I was wrong,” he says. “If another player makes a mistake, if I get on them publicly, I’m making a bigger mistake.”

By the end of last season, he had been ripped so much for being so angry, his blank eyes and emotionless voice made it seem as if he suddenly didn’t care enough. He says that’s another problem he must solve.

“You don’t want to lose your edge, and I think I tried to change too much,” Penny says. “I need to find that balance.”

He’s using another word this spring to describe his other battle last season.

Cardio.

Even when he was composed enough to finish, he wasn’t strong enough to finish.

So this spring, Penny looks more fit than he ever has. He says an enhanced exercise routine has been his best defense against a bulging disk that haunted him during the second half of last season.

“My back hurt all the time, but I tried not to say anything because you have to learn to pitch with pain,” Penny says. “It got so bad, I would flinch even before I threw the ball because I knew it would hurt when I did.”

The pain, he says, caused him to give up his split-finger pitch after the All-Star break, which helps explain the fractured numbers.

At the break, he was 10-2 with a 2.91 earned-run average, good enough to start the All-Star game in Pittsburgh.

In the second half, he was 6-7 with a 6.25 ERA.

“That has to change this year,” Penny says. “Lots of things have to change.”

Briefly sidelined this spring because of a sore shoulder, he is already pitching through it, and will start Monday in his final Vero appearance before eventually taking his spot as the fourth pitcher in the rotation.

That’s right, he’s gone from All-Star starter to fourth starter in eight short months. It’s a big drop, but Penny jokingly attempts to look at the bright side.

“I like to fly under the radar,” he says, grinning, knowing that this spring, he is the radar.

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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.