Brad Penny knows what time of year it is. The Red Sox’ fifth starter has been traded twice before, and his name has been a regular part of the rumor-mill circuit for years.

He is also aware that his current club – one that he is enjoying immensely, and that he believes has put his career back on track – is in a position where it can deal from a remarkable wealth of starting pitching.

In fact, with the coming return of John Smoltz (the man who taught Penny the grip on his split-finger fastball when both were in the National League in 2006), Penny is unsurprised that his name will once again be the subject of trade speculation. The notion doesn’t bother him.

“You don’t do anything (with the rumors). Go out there, prepare to pitch on Monday and prepare to pitch every fifth day,” said Penny. “Just keep doing my work. Anything I can’t control, I can’t worry about. I’ve just got to go out there and pitch.

“I’d love to stay here, but whatever happens happens,” he added. “This game has become such a business, and we do have a lot of depth. I’ll just go out there and work my butt off wherever I go. But there are a lot more trade rumors that haven’t happened than that have for me.”

Right now, the mention of Penny in trade speculation seems like precisely that: speculation. There had been some published suggestions that the Mets were likely to be interested in the right-hander, but a major-league source said that New York had no interest in acquiring the pitcher.

Penny is tuning out all of that background noise, and instead focusing on his efforts to get his career back on the trajectory it was following when he went 32-13 with a 3.65 ERA in 2006-07 with the Dodgers. That emergence as one of the top pitchers in the N.L. was halted in 2008, when Penny was injured and limited by pitching through pain for most of the year.

To date, Penny has seen promise in his performance with Boston, though he still recognizes that there is still some distance separating him from that dominant form of a couple years ago.

“I’m happy with where I’m at. I didn’t pitch a lot last year. I was hurt. So I understand it’s not going to come right back,” said Penny. “I’m happy with the way I’m pitching now, the last four or five starts. But there are things I need to improve on, so that’s what I focus on.”

He is 4-1 with a 6.07 ERA for the Sox. Penny has delivered quality starts in five of his eight outings this year. He has gone at least six innings in each of his last four starts, forging a 4.26 ERA in that span. 

The improved consistency of results also suggests greater consistency of stuff. And as Penny comes back from his lost 2008 season (6-9, 6.27), he believes that the gap between his current performance and that of two seasons ago, when he was the starting pitcher in the All-Star Game for the N.L., is shrinking.

“I’m close (to the 2007 form). I’d say, command-wise, I’m coming around with my fastball. My split-finger’s not quite there yet,” he said. “Usually, the last pitch to come is my splitty. It’s a feel pitch. I think my curveball is better than it was even in ’07. Once I get that splitty, it makes me a different pitcher.

“I threw it a lot last game,” Penny noted of his 6.2 inning effort against the Blue Jays, in which he took a shutout into the seventh before permitting two runs. “Even though it wasn’t working, I was using it as a change of speeds. Once that starts working and I get the depth on it I need, it will make a big difference.”

The split was a pitch that Penny learned from Smoltz. He was unhappy with his changeup, a pitch that was inconsistent for him, and so he consulted the former Braves ace in a weight room one day in 2006, when their two clubs were facing each other.

The results were almost immediate. That makes his inability to reclaim the pitch a bit confounding for Penny.

“What’s frustrating about that pitch, when I first started throwing, it was nasty every time. I thought, ‘Oh, man – this is easy.’ Last year, being hurt all year, I didn’t throw it at all,” said Penny. “It hurt when I was throwing it. So I stopped throwing it. I think I just lost it a little bit. You lose touch with your pitches and your feel for it.”

Penny believes that, if and when he reclaims the split-finger, he will be ready to elevate his game. The ability for Jason Varitek to rely on three pitches (fastball, curve, change) in any count will be a difference maker.

But for now, Penny is content to once again be in the middle of a run where he is competing at a level that proved impossible to achieve for most of last year, when he began the season with a 5-2 record and 3.19 ERA but finished by going 1-7 with an 8.77 ERA.

He credits the shoulder program of assistant trainer Mike Reinold with having positioned him to be strong both now and going forward. Indeed, it was in no small part Reinold’s presence that drew Penny to sign a one-year, $5 million deal with Boston, and the pitcher has gotten everything he hoped for out of the experience (both in the training room, and in the clubhouse) that he hoped for.

“It’s nice having an organization that cares so much about its pitchers that it hires a guy just to (develop individual shoulder programs for them. I’ve never seen that before,” said Penny. “It’s a competitive team. It’s a close group – everyone here pulls for each other. We were pretty close in Florida (with the Marlins), but this is a closer team. They’ve treated me awesome.”

That explains why Penny, all other things being equal, would like to remain where he is through the contract. But he is beyond the point of shock with any trade.

In fact, the only time he has been surprised when it came to the trade market was when he was dealt for the first time, going from Arizona to the Marlins in 1999 as part of a deal for closer Matt Mantei. In retrospect, that deal was less surprising than the way in which the news was delivered.

“(Then-Diamondbacks manager) Buck Showalter called me on the phone. The G.M. was also on the phone,” said Penny.  “Showalter said, ‘It wasn’t my idea to trade you.’ I was like, ‘Wow—you said that, and the G.M. is on the phone!’”

But the move was a good one for Penny, who immediately had the opportunity to solidify himself as a member of the Marlins rotation in 2000. He went 40-34 with a 4.03 ERA with the Marlins and became a key member of a 2003 World Series winner. Then, he was dealt to the Dodgers, where his career took another step forward before the injury.

And now, once again, he has embraced his latest move. Regardless of how long his time in Boston will last – whether he is with the Red Sox through the end of the season or only for weeks or months more – he has embraced his environment, and the role that it is playing in getting him closer to where he was, and where he once again wants to be.

“Here was good for me, too, because I’m not sure if I didn’t work with (Reinold), that my shoulder would have gotten back,” said Penny. “I don’t have one complaint. It’s probably been my best experience being on a team in baseball thus far.”