Rogers has evolved with experience

DETROIT – He is perhaps the most self-deprecating pitcher in major league history.

Just ask him.

Kenny Rogers will tell you he’s old. He’s always sore. He’s got nothing on his fastball. He’s failed as much — if not more — than any pitcher in baseball. And all this stuff about being a Dr. Phil in spikes to the Tigers core of talented young starters? Buncha crud.

Kenny Rogers would have you believe all that even when the cold — really cold, if you were in Detroit on Sunday — hard facts say something else.

At this point, the facts say simply this: Like him or not, Kenny Rogers is one of baseball’s elite left-handed pitchers.

Ever.

Rogers’ eight shutout innings in Detroit’s 3-1 win over St. Louis in Game 2 of the World Series Sunday was just further documentation. Rogers, who allowed only two hits (both singles) has now pitched 23 consecutive scoreless innings in October. It’s the second-longest single postseason scoreless streak in history. If the series goes to six games, Rogers can break the all-time record with five more scoreless innings.

Add that to his other accomplishments. This is a guy who has thrown a perfect game, who has more than 200 career wins and appears headed for 250 and who is the best fielding pitcher of a generation.

That ought to speak for itself. But it didn’t.

What separated Rogers from being elevated to the upper tier of lefties was a history of postseason struggles. He failed as a starter for the Yankees in the 1996 World Series and failed as a reliever for the Mets in the 1999 World Series. And if you can’t make it in New York, you can’t make it anywhere.

Rogers could win all the games he wanted in Texas or Oakland or Minnesota or even a god-forsaken outpost such as Detroit, but his career would always be tinged with a “but.” But, it would be written, he couldn’t win the big game. But, they’d say, he couldn’t pitch in New York.

Ready for some revisionist history?

His postseason performance, which includes wins over New York in the Division Series and Oakland in the AL Championship Series, will go down as the definitive October pitching performance of our lifetimes.

Only Christy Mathewson, for whom the Cy Young Award would be named if not for Cy Young, has ever had a more dazzling postseason. He pitched three complete-game shutouts in a single a World Series. That was in 1905. Remember? Didn’t think so.

These are the things to remember about another magical night in a magical postseason run that will ultimately define Rogers’ career.

Rogers took the mound Sunday on a night when baseball probably shouldn’t have been played. It rained all day in Detroit and it was 44 degrees at game time. By the time Rogers went to the mound for the seventh, it was 40 and it felt like 31. Rogers, who turns 42 next month and often feels like he is 50, may have been the first pitcher in World Series history to be on the mound with an age higher than the temperature.

He was artistic in the first, working around Albert Pujols (a four-pitch walk) and an infield single that followed. He was mechanical over the next three innings, retiring nine in a row.

He became emotional — a trait that has worked to his advantage this postseason — in the fifth when he walked Jim Edmonds to lead off the inning and then needed a sliding catch from center fielder Curtis Granderson to avoid further trouble. He was athletic, too, in the inning, by reacting quickly to catch Aaron Miles liner that ended the inning. It was the fourth defensive play he made in the game.

He was overpowering — yes, overpowering — in the sixth, throwing a 91-mph fastball by Scott Rolen. OK, 91 may not sound so great in this era, but coming after a steady diet of 84- and 85-mph fastballs all night, it was something special.

And he was efficient in the eighth. After Yadier Molina led off with a single, which was the Cardinals’ second hit of the game, he got a pair of ground balls in the next four pitches. Miles’ was hit too softly to be a double play, but David Eckstein’s was not. It ended the inning.

It ended Rogers’ night, too.

But the memories will live on for years.