My good buddy Spute asked, so here I am, answering. Here are Kenny Rogers‘ first five starts this year:

4/2 vs. Royals 6 IP, 5 H, 1 BB, 4 K, 2 R (L)
4/8 at Red Sox 4.2 IP, 8 H, 3 BB, 3 K, 3 R (L)
4/13 at White Sox 4 IP, 7 H, 4 BB, 1 K, 7 R (L)
4/18 at Blue Jays 6.2 IP, 3 H, 4 BB, 1 K, 4 R (W)
4/23 vs. Rangers 3.1 IP, 9 H, 3 BB, 0 K, 6 R

Add it all up and, despite the assistance of the user-friendly Royals lineup, he’s sporting a well-earned 7.66 ERA and Traschelesque ratios of 5.5 walks per 9 innings against 3.3 strikeouts per 9 innings. Well, that sucks. Obviously a guy isn’t going to hold down a job for very long, pitching like that, unless he’s Matt Morris and his employers kind of like losing.

Anytime a notably old player gets off to a bad start, it’s natural to speculate about whether he’s finally reached the end of his rope. After all, that was the excuse reasoning J.P. Ricciardi gave for releasing Frank Thomas this week: Hey, the guy’s finished. But then, C.C. Sabathia through five starts has an ERA of 10.13. Is C.C. Sabathia toast? Roy Oswalt’s ERA right now is 6.00; is Roy Oswalt finished? Time to hang ‘em up and go hunting? Phil Hughes, 8.82 ERA through 4 starts; time to go back and get his degree while he still can?

Of course the point is obvious. Kenny Rogers is older than dirt, and when he goes out and gets lit up like a Christmas tree his first few starts, it automatically makes us think he may now be officially washed up, but the fact is, we don’t have enough information yet. It’s too early. The Tigers are going to keep running him out there for another two months at least (unless he hits the DL first, of course), because

1. They’re paying him $8 million, after all, and
2. A scenario involving the Tigers clearing 90 wins probably has to involve Kenny Rogers giving them at least something like average pitching. They don’t have much in the way of rotation depth.

So Jim Leyland will give Rogers every chance to work through his issues. That’s in Rogers’ defense; the prosecution would point out two things against him:

1. There’s another important difference between Sabathia/Oswalt/Hughes and Kenny Rogers, besides the fact that Rogers is old enough to be their father: Sabathia, Oswalt and Hughes aren’t coming off a season that was mostly lost to a serious arm injury. That’s a very bright red flag in Rogers’ file.

2. At least Sabathia, Oswalt and Hughes are striking out a reasonable number of batters. Rogers has succeeded at advanced ages in the past largely because he didn’t walk many batters; so far this year his walk rate is way up and he isn’t striking anybody out. This, again, is often indicative of (pick one: injury; toastifiedness; all of the above).

So, is Kenny Rogers toast? I think it’s better than 50/50 that he is, but I don’t see how Jim Leyland has any choice but to keep running him out there until he proves to everybody’s satisfaction that he’s finished. That’s another one of the reasons I’m not optimistic about the Tigers.