Nationals’ bullpen woes potentially could ruin bid to make postseason

WASHINGTON» General manager Mike Rizzo couldn’t find a seat for the Washington Nationals’ series finale at Wrigley Field last week. ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball” crews filled the auxiliary boxes usually used by the visiting general manager, and Rizzo can hardly walk a few yards in that stadium without an old Chicago friend or longtime worker calling “Riz!” Sitting in the stands wouldn’t have afforded much of a chance to concentrate.

So Rizzo headed downstairs to the visiting manager’s office, a tiny windowless room with walls of bland beige brick and little room to breathe. If that room wasn’t built to demoralize opponents, it certainly serves the purpose.

He sat there alone, watching on the television as Max Scherzer clung to a one-run lead through seven gutsy innings. He watched as Koda Glover hung on through an adventurous eighth. He watched Ryan Zimmerman find redemption against Brandon Kintzler when he drove home insurance runs in the eighth. Then he watched Ryan Madson surrender a walk-off grand slam.

Rizzo walked out to see a look on the face of the only player already in the clubhouse — Scherzer, who takes losing harder than anyone else on the roster. Rizzo felt for him, for all of them. The bullpen wasn’t supposed to do this, not this year. And yet once again, it fell apart.

Over the last two weeks, arguably the most pivotal two weeks of the season, the bullpen has repeatedly let this team down. Whether in that Sunday night shocker, or in Saturday night’s 10inning debacle, the Nationals have watched chance after chance to gain ground slip away. As the rest of their roster has finally coalesced as intended, that bullpen has tripped them.

The bullpen the Nationals had on the day of the July 31 trade deadline included Kelvin Herrera and Madson, as well as optimism that Sean Doolittle would be back soon. Kintzler and Shawn Kelley were providing key innings. Justin Miller continued to prove himself reliable. Matt Grace could yield length. Sammy Solis was back.

The bullpen the Nationals have Monday includes only one of those players, Grace. The transformation has been swift, unintentional and ultimately destructive. The Nationals have the eighth-highest bullpen ERA (5.06) in baseball since. Over that postdeadline stretch, they have lost four games they were leading in the seventh or later, and another they tied in the bottom of the ninth. They planned to have better.

As of late on the Monday night before the trade deadline, the Nationals were still considering a variety of possibilities. In one of the more involved pre-deadline preparation efforts they’ve experienced under Rizzo, according to people familiar with it, the Nationals front office constructed a handful plans — including one in which they sold off key pieces, some of which were veteran relievers. Bryce Harper, of course, was also one of the names that would have departed in a total sell-off.

Rizzo believed the Nationals should stand pat. As he said in his midmorning text to The Post that solidified his stance, “Bryce isn’t going anywhere. I believe in this team.” He made his recommendation to ownership but they still wanted options, to know what a sell-off might yield.

So the front office provided them. When names started being exchanged, ownership agreed to stay the course. At some point midmorning on Tuesday, the Nationals public relations staff understood the team would not be making any more deals. Then they did.

That deal sent Brandon Kintzler to the Chicago Cubs for a minor-league reliever that would not help this team this year.