CLEVELAND — Daisuke Matsuzaka seemed emotionally and physically drained as he sat at his locker in the corner of the Red Sox’ clubhouse at Jacobs Field after last night’s 4-2 loss to the Cleveland Indians in Game Three of the ALCS.

Hours after his night was over — 462/3 innings (101 pitches, 59 strikes), 4 runs, 6 hits, 2 walks and 6 strikeouts — the right-hander was leaning back in his chair, hands folded behind his head, in deep meditation probably trying to figure out what happened.

It was only his second postseason start in the majors and he remains winless. The Indians’ hitters worked the count early and often as Matsuzaka reached the 101 pitches in only the fifth inning, which makes for a long night.

Both Red Sox manager Terry Francona and catcher Jason Varitek said after the loss — which now finds Boston trailing in the best-of-seven series, 2-1 — they thought Dice-K wasn’t as bad as the numbers may look.

“He threw some good pitches,” said the manager. “He had some depth to his slider and his fastball was good. He just got into some deep counts.”

Varitek never sugarcoats anything and he agreed with what Francona said about Matsuzaka’s performance.

“He was pretty good,” said Boston’s captain. “I thought he threw the ball pretty well. We just couldn’t get it done with earlier pitches, but the ball came out of his hand pretty good. … Dice just missed. He was just missing in some situations and that’s all it was.”

When Matsuzaka did make a mistake, Cleveland definitely made him pay for it, including the Indians’ Kenny Lofton who crushed a two-run homer in the bottom of the second inning. It was the only the third time in Lofton’s career that the veteran faced the Japanese import, and he didn’t waste any time as he drove the first pitch he saw and deposited it into the right-field seats.

“The fans are pretty excited when I come up to the plate, and that’s a good thing for me,” said Lofton. “I just try to enjoy it and also try to do something. Once you’ve got the fans out there cheering for you, you want to make something happen. I just wanted to try to be aggressive at that point and I got lucky.”

Cleveland needed only one other inning — the fifth — to push the Boston starter out of the game as the Indians’ scored two more in the fifth for a 4-0 lead.

“I’d think he probably would have preferred to pitch better,” said Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell. “He wasn’t getting ahead probably the way he wanted to, and good teams are going to exploit that.”

Even though Cleveland scored only four runs, Boston was held to just two on seven hits. Other than Varitek’s two-run homer in the seventh inning, the Red Sox couldn’t carry their offensive momentum from the first two games of this series over to last night

“We got beat up, plain and simple,” said rookie second baseman Dustin Pedroia. “We didn’t hit and our pitching staff did a good job; we just didn’t do anything. I thought [Matsuzaka] was fine. There were a couple of pitches that could have gone our way, but they didn’t and it changed a couple of guys’ at-bats.”

Matsuzaka would not talk to the media after the game, not even to the Matsuzaka Media Mafia, releasing only a quick statement, saying he was disappointed. Then it was back to his seat in the corner of the clubhouse — with his hands again folded behind his head, only this time he was leaning forward in disgust.