SAN DIEGO — Riley Cornelio stood at his locker, anxiously tapping his foot as a camera and a microphone appeared in front of his face. The record books will say that the rookie right-hander did his job, pitching three perfect innings in Tuesday night’s 5-4 loss to the Padres, and that he was not responsible for the Nationals’ MLB record-setting 38th blown save.Still, the look in his eyes indicated that Cornelio knew exactly what two pitchers — Erik Tolman, who blew the save when Manny Machado hit an eighth-inning chopper up the middle, and Jared Simpson, who walked three batters to set it up — were going through.Four months had elapsed since the Nats thrust Cornelio into a high-leverage spot in his debut in Chicago, where he blew a save. That memory was still in there somewhere.His voice shaking, Cornelio promised that they were doing everything they could. That they were working as hard as possible. That his two teammates who suffered on the mound in front of a sellout crowd in San Diego were good pitchers who were as frustrated as anyone in the world.“It’s not from a lack of trying,” Cornelio said about 45 minutes after the four-run eighth sunk the Nationals. “I’ll tell you that.”The Nationals led 4-1 in the eighth, then didn’t, breaking a record set by the 2024 Chicago White Sox, who went 41-121. They have watched 17 different pitchers blow a save, tying a record set by the 2023 Oakland Athletics, who finished 50-112. They are back in the basement of the National League East for the first time since April 11, a season-low 13 games under .500 at 67-80.Two days earlier, manager Blake Butera said that good teams can’t blow this many saves. The more legitimate question is whether a team this good — or rather, the front office and ownership group of a team this talented — can put players through such a wringer again next season.Tolman spent six years recovering from two elbow surgeries and a freak injury that almost cost him his foot. Simpson transitioned from a forgotten eighth-round pick into a big leaguer. That they were Butera’s two best options is the necessary torture of a failed past. These were heartwarming stories, tagged with the wrong kind of history.“Losing sucks,” Tolman said. “And you want to do whatever you can do to get back to winning. It starts in the weight room, the training room, it’s everything building up to the games. I look around, and lots of guys in this locker room work their tail off to try to win games.“And sometimes it just doesn’t happen.”It is not just Tolman and Simpson. It is Daylen Lile, who seems to hate losing more than anyone on the roster and sat alone on the bench watching the Padres celebrate. It is Dylan Crews, who remarked the other day that he has chased the feeling he had of capturing a title at LSU every day since it happened, and now is stuck thinking about all the times the Nationals were one pitch away. It is the whole offense, which ranks second in MLB in runs with one of the youngest, least-expensive rosters in the sport.Those White Sox and Athletics teams were helpless. This one was probably never going to make the postseason, but it has the look, when everything is going right, of a group that is not too far away. Since the trade deadline, though, the Nationals seem to have lost their moxie.No journey from a rebuild into a contention window happens without hardship. But it is fair to wonder if this process of putting unproven relievers in late-game situations and watching the offense suffer in silence has consequences. It’s also fair to wonder if this organization can continue punting on paying for a competitive roster and risk breaking the spirit of its players.“Effort-wise, if everyone saw what we’re doing behind closed doors, I think they’d be happy with what we’re doing,” Tolman said. “But obviously, we’ve blown some games, and it hasn’t gone our way.”It was the Nationals’ third blown save in their past four games after they conceded late leads to the Los Angeles Dodgers twice over the weekend. Though the bullpen depth has improved as the season has chugged along, the current corps remains one of baseball’s least productive units.Nationals relievers have allowed more walks and home runs than any group. They have an 11.93 ERA in what FanGraphs defines as a high-leverage situation. They plan to work on velocity and developing nastier stuff this offseason. The hope is that nights like these will motivate them to work harder over the winter.These are the pitchers who are getting an opportunity, in part because they earned it and in part because there were openings here that would not have existed elsewhere. Cornelio’s outing Wednesday, regardless of the small sample, is proof of concept that this can work: Those thrown to the wolves early can come back stronger if they do not crumble.But what if they keep getting thrown out there in 2027 without any veteran support? Without even one player over 30 years old? Without one pitcher who has high-leverage experience?What then?“Failures in life, we can either look at and put our head down and accept it, or we can face it head on and take something from it and learn from it,” Butera said. “That’s what I’m hoping we’ll do.”What, then, tells him they’ll be the group that figures this one out?“I’ll find out tomorrow when I talk to them,” he said.