Good God Get the O's Away from the West Coast.

The Orioles were swept by the A's over the weekend, completing an ugly west coast road trip with a 1-5 record while getting outscored 22-10. Deconstructing the Oakland series:

The Good

Despite getting thoroughly handled at every point in the series (the O's didn't hold a lead for a single inning), there are some positives to dig out the wreckage.

Nolan Reimold continues to hit.

While Matt Wieters is struggling at the plate to start his major league career, fellow rookie Reimold has hit the ground running. Reimold had 2 hits including a 3-run HR in one start and two pinch hit appearances in the series. In his first 72 major league at-bats, the left fielder has hit .280/.325/.556 with 6 home runs. The OBP is low, but figures to improve given his strong OBP numbers in AA and AAA. The encouraging aspect of Reimold's start is the power, homering once every 12 at-bats and compiling the third best SLG on the team behind Luke Scott (.672) and Adam Jones (.597). It's a small sample size but a promising start nonetheless from the 25-year-old outfielder.

The bullpen was lights out.

Mark Hendrickson, Matt Albers, Alberto Castillo, Brian Bass, David Hernandez, Danys Baez, George Sherrill, and Jim Johnson allowed a combined 3 earned runs in 18.1 innings. All three of those runs were allowed by Hendrickson on a 3 run HR by Matt Holliday on Friday. Take out Hendrickson's 3.1 inning appearance, and the bullpen tossed 15 innings of scoreless baseball. It should be noted that the A's have the 28th worst team batting average in MLB, but the bullpen's performance is encouraging nonetheless, especially given the precarious position they were put in by the starters as is detailed later in this post.

The Bad

The offense.

The offense mustered 20 hits in 100 at-bats for a pathetic .200 BA in the series. Two of the games were against rookie starters. Luke Scott, Adam Jones, and Nolan Reimold were the only bats that even remotely showed up. The offense scored 5 runs in 3 games. Perhaps most disturbing was the lineup's lack of patience, as the team walked a total of 3 times in the series. Three. The 2009 Orioles are not a playoff team, or a great team, or even a good team. The one thing they are supposed to be able to do, however, is score runs, with some all-star caliber hitters in the lineup. You wouldn't know that from watching them the last week.

The Ugly

The starting pitching.

Starters Jeremy Guthrie, Jason Berken, and Rich Hill threw a combined 4.2 innings and allowed 18 earned runs in the series. 4.2 innings, 18 ER. No one is going to confuse this rotation with the 1971 version (four 20-game winners). Still, against an Oakland team with a collective .242 BA and playing in one of the most favorable parks to pitchers in the majors, the performances are alarming. It's especially disappointing coming from Guthrie, who is supposed to be team's rock in the rotation, and Hill, who has easily the best stuff of the five starters. Hill was coming off a start in Seattle in which he had pitched 7+ shutout innings. Guthrie's start ballooned his ERA to 5.61, which is going to be a sticking point to potential trade partners if MacPhail ever gets serious about moving him. As a rookie who is not considered a prospect, Berken's performance can be more easily ignored. It's weekends like this that make the arrivals of the Big Three of Tillman, Matusz, and Arietta all the more tantalizing.

Hopefully coming home is the best medicine for the O's, who host Seattle, Atlanta, and the NY Mets in the next ten days.