There is good and bad news for the Washington baseball team heading into this weekend’s three-game series against Cal.

The good news for the Huskies: Cal is ninth in the Pac-10 in pitching and is coming off a three-game sweep at the hands of Oregon State.

The bad news: The Bears are second in batting average behind Arizona and have, in many ways, one of the more potent offenses in the conference.

The deciding factors in a crucial home series against Cal could be whether the Huskies can exploit the good news to their advantage, and make sure they keep the bad news — the Bears’ .304 batting average and home run threats — to a minimum.

But that could be a problem for the UW’s starting pitchers, none of whom have managed to pitch five innings in any of Washington’s last 11 games, allowing 50 runs in 39.2 combined innings during that time.

“It’s a concern,” said UW head coach Ken Knutson. “You got to get more out of your starters, and this weekend, I anticipate that we will. I’m hopeful that we’ll get into a rhythm now.”

The Huskies will send Aaron West, Jason Erickson and Andrew Kittredge to the hill to hopefully end that dubious 11-game streak.

Knutson believes part of the reason his starters have had trouble this season is that they are getting behind in the count too easily.

“We’re just throwing too many pitches,” Knutson said last weekend. “We’re not throwing enough strikes, and our fastball command hasn’t been great. I don’t know where that came from, and it’s not so much that we’re walking people; we’re walking a few, but we are not having command of the strike zone. [Pitches] are getting fouled off, or they are balls, as opposed to getting guys out. Pitch count goes up, and we got to go to our bullpen.”

The UW bullpen — especially the freshmen — has been one of the brighter spots this season, part of the reason why the Huskies’ 17-year head coach has been shuffling some of his long relievers into starting roles.

Freshmen West, Kittredge and Seth Haehl all have ERAs less than 3.50 heading into the series against Cal (15-14, 3-6 Pac-10), whereas all the Huskies’ regular starters have ERAs greater than 5.00.

But after playing five straight games, ending a six-game losing streak at Gonzaga and going into this weekend without having had a practice for an entire week, Washington (11-19, 1-5 Pac-10) will have to keep its focus to battle the Bears at home.

“Coming off a win is always better,” Knutson said of facing Cal after a 14-7 victory over Gonzaga. “We’ve played five straight days; it’ll be a little bit of a deep breath to come home. But we just have to play better at home now.”

Easier said than done for the Huskies, who possess a 3-8 home record.

Reach reporter Allen Wagner at sports@dailyuw.com.