Before Frank Francisco's unprecedented and utterly blindsiding ninth-inning meltdown crushed the sky-high spirits of many North Texas baseball fans on Friday evening, only one other Texas Rangers pitcher had managed to post a worse single-game WPA in 2009 than that which denoted Francisco's apparent career-worst appearance: C.J. Wilson, who was dinged for three earned runs in just one-third of an inning by Oakland back on August 3rd and slashed the Rangers' win probability by a whopping 96.3 percent.

That gutwrenching ninth-inning-collapse didn't prove to be the proverbial catastrophic moment, as evidenced by the Rangers' resilient 5-2 road mini-run in the week predating this latest defeat, and while our basic instinct as sports fans compels us to hyperbolize the impact of the most crushing losses or the most uplifting wins, let's be perfectly honest with ourselves -- this, in all likelihood, isn't the catastrophic moment either, and to preemptively classify it as such is not giving this ballclub nearly enough credit.

On a more pertinent note, Francisco enjoyed a full week of rest before his 21-pitch outing against the Indians on Thursday afternoon, so his substandard velocity and command in Friday evening's disastrous appearance don't appear to have been the product of fatigue; perhaps an undiagnosed recurrence of mild right biceps tendinitis played a factor, or perhaps he simply couldn't get completely loose while he was warming up.

The thing that most people don't want to hear, but need to keep remembering is that even the very best pitchers in major league history endured their fair share of second-rate performances, and while nobody will deny that Francisco selected a horrendous time to emulate the early-2007 version of Francisco Cordero, let us not forget that this three-game series might be vastly less important right now if not for Francisco's prior 2009 contributions.

As for Jarrod Saltalamacchia's continued shoulder-related misfortunes, last week's ambiguously termed "arm fatigue" and Friday evening's more troubling manifestation of numbness in his throwing hand have effectively forced Taylor Teagarden into a starting role behind the plate, where he's likely to attain a 70-75 percent share of the playing time as Saltalamacchia seems destined for a disabled list stint and perhaps season-ending surgery if it is determined that he's battling Thoracic Outlet Syndrome. An appointment with a medical specialist -- perhaps Dallas vascular surgeon Dr. Gregory Pearl, who diagnosed Matt Harrison's TOS -- is evidently pending.

The timing involved with this development is not fantastic either, in the sense that Saltalamacchia had actually clubbed two homers and drawn four walks in his last 26 plate apearances, but the downgrade in offensive production from Saltalamacchia to Teagarden is, from a seasonal standpoint, fairly marginal; both possess park-adjusted wOBAs in the .285-.290 range, amounting to a difference of perhaps two or three runs down the home stretch of the regular season.

With Max Ramirez only recently resurfacing in the Arizona Rookie League as part of a low-minors rehab assignment, Triple-A Oklahoma City backstop Kevin Richardson is reportedly the internal front-runner to seize the backup catching position behind Teagarden, but depending on the Rangers' preliminary assessment of Saltalmacchia's condition and the perceived severity of his arm problems, Texas could probably swing a cheap waiver-period deal for a catcher slightly better than the on-hand replacement-level options with little difficulty.