Bedeviled from the start

ANAHEIM, Calif. - They won the American League West, but when it came to their best-of-five Division Series against the Red Sox, the only thing the Angels managed to win after getting swept by the AL East champions was a conciliatory handshake, a chuck on the shoulder, and the right to scatter to all compass points for a premature winter break.

The only consolation the Angels could claim after yesterday's 9-1 loss in Game 3 before a crowd of 45,262 at Angel Stadium was that the Halos didn't have to take a cross-country, red-eye flight home to clear out their lockers.

"As disappointing as this is, and this is extremely disappointing," said Angels manager Mike Scioscia, whose team lost its seventh straight playoff game - and ninth in a row in postseason against the Red Sox, a streak of misery that goes back to a 7-6 loss here in Game 5 of the 1986 AL Championship Series. "We fully thought we were going to come in and play better and we didn't."

The tedious process of packing up for the season was begun, it seemed, the moment the Angels returned home from their futile trip to Fenway Park, where they were shut out, 4-0, by Josh Beckett's complete-game gem in Game 1 Wednesday night and then absorbed a devastating 6-3 loss in Game 2 when they were bludgeoned by Manny Ramírez's mammoth ninth-inning, walkoff homer as the game crept into the wee hours of Saturday morning.

Yesterday, David Ortiz combined with fellow bash brother Ramírez to put this one out of reach when they gave Curt Schilling a 2-0 lead by hitting back-to-back solo homers off Jered Weaver, a 25-year-old righthander who left in the sixth inning (4 hits, 2 runs, 3 walks, 5 strikeouts, 95 pitches) after issuing a leadoff walk to Ortiz.

"We couldn't get anything going," Weaver said afterward as teammates began emptying their lockers and filling cardboard boxes with their belongings. "It was just a one-sided series."

One reason it turned out that way was because the Angels were unable to do the things that kept their offense going for much of the season. They were unable to hit, get runners on base, and manufacture runs. While that approach helped the Halos get to the playoffs, it was apparent from the start of this short series that it wasn't going to cut it against the Sox.

"In May and June we [scored] an incredible amount of manufactured runs with no home runs, with no slugging percentage," Scioscia said. "As the season wore on, that dissipated a little bit and put some pressure on us."

That pressure was intensified in the playoffs as the Angels hit .192 (19 for 99) as a team, had 25 total bases (including six doubles), were outscored, 19-4, and went scoreless in 25 of 26 innings before pushing across a meaningless run in the ninth on Howie Kendrick's sacrifice fly.

The Sox, meanwhile, flexed their offensive might by hitting .269 (25 for 93) with six doubles and five home runs.

"We beat a lot of good clubs and a lot of good pitchers without hitting the ball out of the ballpark for long stretches this season," Scioscia said. "But, unfortunately we weren't able to carry that over into the playoffs."

Nor were the Angels able to carry over any semblance of a healthy roster, starting with center fielder Gary Matthews Jr. (patella tendinitis) and starter Bartolo Colon (elbow) as ALDS scratches. Left fielder Garret Anderson showed up in Boston with his right eye nearly swollen shut by conjunctivitis. He gamely soldiered on, playing the first two games, but was unable to make it through Game 3 after he was unable to get a jump on Mike Lowell's double to left in the second and took himself out of the game. He was replaced by rookie Reggie Willits in the third.

"I just couldn't see the ball," Anderson said. "When I was unable to do that, I knew it was time to come out."

Then there was Vladimir Guerrero. The Angels' All-Star right fielder was the one free-swinging hitter in Scioscia's lineup who seemed to plunge fear deep into the hearts of Red Sox Nation, but he wound up scaring no one after getting just two singles in 10 at-bats.

But Scioscia wasn't about to fall back on injuries as a reason for his team's postseason shortcomings.

"It's part of any season, guys are going to get hurt," he said. "We got hit by some of ours at the wrong time. Some guys weren't swinging the bats like they can at the wrong time. That's baseball. You're not going to look back and make any excuses.

"They're not going to let us call them in a month or so when everybody is healthy and say, 'Hey, let's play this series again.' They beat us. It wasn't because of our health. Those guys went out there and beat us, and that's the bottom line."

Michael Vega can be reached at vega@globe.com.