BOSTON — Like the creaky house that doesn’t survive the hurricane, the 2009 Red Sox fell apart all at once. But the cracks in the foundation were visible long before the storm came and swept it all away.

Difficulty in hitting good pitching, particularly right-handed pitching. A penchant, as a lineup, for streaky hitting, and for going cold all at once. A closer who allowed too many baserunners. A defense that was unspectacular, at times shaky, and always unable to stop opposing baserunners. An over-reliance on the home-field advantage of Fenway Park, and a difficulty in playing in opposing stadiums that had their own fervent crowds.

They were things that some saw coming a mile away. Individually, they were not much of a concern. Together, and at the wrong time against the wrong opponent, they would overwhelm.

“Some nuances, but nothing new, only things that were reflected earlier in the season as well,” general manager Theo Epstein said of what he saw in his team’s failure. “You can’t make decisions based on any three games, but I don’t think anything that occurred in this series came completely out of the blue, either. There were times when we struggled hitting on the road in this series and there were times during the year we struggled hitting on the road. There were certain things that went down in this series that were foreshadowed during the regular season as well. That said, I think we we’re a team capable of winning the World Series and had we come out and played better, we’d be playing right now.”

A listlessness entering the postseason didn’t help, despite Epstein saying it wasn’t a factor.

Perhaps, as well, a cockiness that led them to underestimate their opponents, the longtime patsy Angels, a team that entered this postseason improved, hungry, and ready to slough off a 20-year losing streak to the Red Sox.

But the most glaring deficiency in this series was Boston’s inability to hit, and to hit good pitching.

Most teams hit. But what has long made the Red Sox the Red Sox was that even when they weren’t piling up the doubles and home runs, they were still walking and manufacturing a few runs. This season, when the Sox slumped, their walks fell as well, and that was just as true in this series.

David Ortiz was 1-for-12 in the ALDS, and didn’t walk once. Kevin Youkilis, who got on base at the second-highest rate in the league this season, had only one hit and no walks.

“We didn’t play well out in Anaheim, which killed us. That pretty much put us where we are today,” Youkilis said after Sunday’s loss. “There’s no excuses, other than the fact that that team was better than us. They beat us in this series because they played better ball.”

Only left fielder Jason Bay, earned more than one walk. With three, he paced the team.

But at the same time, Bay is perhaps the perfect exemplar of this team’s streakiness. This season he led the team, and nearly the league, in home runs. But his 36 homers came in spurts, with him sometimes disappearing for weeks at a time. The team’s offense would occasionally do the same, simply falling away for several games, especially against good right-handed pitching. The addition of switch-hitter Victor Martinez helped that, but didn’t cure it.

The inconsistent offense was only one of the ills of this year’s Sox. They came into the year with a reputation as a stellar defensive club. They quickly lost it.

The team was third-from the bottom in defensive efficiency, a measure of how often balls put into play are turned into outs. In 2007, the Red Sox led the league in defensive efficiency, converting 70.5 percent of balls put in play into outs. This season, they are the third-worst team in the league, converting 67.9 percent of balls in play into outs.

The addition of shortstop Alex Gonzalez helped to bring those numbers up in the final months, but the Sox were still a poor defensive club.

“If you look back at this year’s club, I don’t think we were the defensive club that we wanted to be, so there is room for improvement with our overall team defense and our defensive efficiency,” Epstein said.

The Sox also proved to be too reliant on the home-field advantage of Fenway Park. They love to play there, they are tailored to play there, and they expect a boost when they return home. But boost or not, you have to play mistake-free baseball to win in the postseason, and the Sox didn’t do that.

“We went out to Anaheim, didn’t swing the bats, came back here [Sunday], and I think we all felt we were kind of positioning ourselves for that kind of second wind, that we have a way of doing,” manager Terry Francona said. “So we’re going home. And it’s frustrating because none of us are ready to go, but that’s what it is.”

To some degree, Red Sox teams have always been built to take advantage of Fenway Park. Lefties slap balls off the wall, strong right-handers bash balls over it. Right-handed hitters like Dustin Pedroia and Mike Lowell make a living slapping doubles off the Green Monster. They combined to bang their way to a combined 255 doubles since 2007, 164 of those at home.

To a degree, that’s just smart baseball: taking advantage of your physical surroundings. But the Sox home-road splits were so dramatic this year –– a 284. home average vs. .257 road, 481 runs scored at Fenway vs. 391 away, a .862 home OPS against a .753 away, and 198 doubles at home vs. 137 on the road — suggests that it’s become a problem.

“We didn’t really hit on the road at all this year. We’ll take a look at seeing if there’s a way to improve that a little bit,” Epstein said. “The disparity between our home and road performance was pretty extreme this year. There are certain players who don’t have enough power to go out on a regular basis in some of the bigger ballparks on the road, but do have the ability to go off or over the wall at Fenway. That’s one example.”

All of these underlying factors contributed, and then one more put the Sox over the top: Papelbon. The once-perfect postseason closer was less dominant this year than ever before in his brief career, and it came to a head at the worst possible time. Papelbon blew the game, and the season ended. But that too was not a total surprise. Especially in the first half of the season, Papelbon was walking too many batters and giving up too many hits. Eventually, it would cost him.

“There were clearly some things that weren’t the same,” Epstein said. “He was dominating, if you look at his numbers. [But] he wasn’t quite as dominating, if you compare it to some years past. If you look at his stuff, it was still closer stuff, but maybe it wasn’t quite the same at times.”

Now, Boston will rebuild, recognizing that this failure didn’t come out of nowhere. There were signs, and worries, and the hope that they wouldn’t come to mean much. They did. Now to the long process of correcting them, through a winter will seem longer than they ever expected.