SEATTLE — 49ers management killed this season with a thousand little pinpricks, sideswipes and unidentified gut punches.

This is owner Jed York and general manager Trent Baalke’s work, and I guess they’re proud of it.

Now here lies the franchise, dead and buried for 2014, a season sacrificed at the altar of political intrigue and high-stakes gossip.

Officially, the 49ers were knocked out of playoff contention Sunday when they lost 17-7 to Seattle at the same time as Detroit beat Minnesota a half-continent away.

Really, what’s worse than the 49ers’ season ending at CenturyLink Field for the second consecutive year as the Seahawks move on?

How about the 49ers’ hopes coming to an end … and the hated Seahawks actually stepping back and looking as if they took some pity on the 49ers in the last minutes Sunday?

How far the fall …

“It’s not something I really want to think about, to be honest,” quarterback Colin Kaepernick said quietly of missing the playoffs for the first time in his NFL career.

But unofficially, this much-anticipated season was torched almost from the beginning by a series of leaks — almost certainly from somebody in 49ers management — that set up coach Jim Harbaugh’s eventual departure.

Harbaugh is still the 49ers coach — that we know of — but there’s very little chance he’ll be coaching this team beyond the end of the regular season … just as has been presumed and whispered since last September.

Harbaugh will meet with York and Baalke either in the next few days or weeks, and then Harbaugh won’t be the 49ers coach anymore, just as York and Baalke have been telegraphing for months.

“I’m always available to sit down with the owner and the general manager, absolutely,” Harbaugh said after the game.

Jim, do you expect to have a conversation about coming back next year?

“Yeah,” Harbaugh said quietly, “at some point I expect that.”

There may be a few more whispers before then, but there’s hardly a point anymore: Harbaugh is out the door — however it happens, whether by firing, resignation or a trade, he will be coaching somewhere else next season.

When you boil it down, that apparently was the entire relative purpose of 2014 — after three consecutive trips to the NFC Championship game.

This is the way this all started, when the 49ers limped to a 1-2 record amid rumors about Harbaugh’s future.

It’s what drained the team of energy and direction in the middle, when they struggled to 4-4, as the speculation continued.

And it’s what doused out all the light Sunday — the 49ers were the inferior team, and they were also the most exhausted and bewildered.

When a locker room knows that the coach is on his way out, how can the players really keep charging at full force?

Baalke and York have every right to be weary of Harbaugh after all these years. They might choose a better coach than Harbaugh could be for them in 2015, and maybe that’s defensive line coach Jim Tomsula.

But the indirect way 49ers management went about this was unprofessional, weak, and it destroyed an entire season.

For the players who might be tired of Harbaugh, it was an opening to let things slide; for the players who weren’t sure, it was an endless distraction.

For the players who still believed in Harbaugh, it was a gnawing problem.

“That’s something I can’t fully wrap my mind around why that would be the situation,” Kaepernick said when I asked if he’s confused by talk that Harbaugh will be gone.

“But he has my full support, no matter if he’s here or somewhere else. I hope he’s back here, and I think he’s a great coach.”

On the small scale, the 49ers played hard Sunday — creeping out to a 7-3 halftime lead, fighting the Seahawks relatively even until the last half-quarter.

But Seattle is too good, and the 49ers have lost too much this season, including Frank Gore, Chris Borland and Carlos Hyde just in this game.

The 49ers are 7-7, and their last two regular-season games — against San Diego and Arizona at Levi’s Stadium — are meaningless.

What happens now?

“You’re asking me?” receiver Anquan Boldin said. “I don’t answer those questions. Those things come from way above my head.”

But everyone knows: The 49ers’ Harbaugh era is over.

A source close to Pete Carroll said the Seahawks coach and Harbaugh shared warm words Sunday about their rivalry, first at USC and Stanford and now in the NFC West, and thanked each other for the competition that has sharpened both.

Harbaugh will move out of the NFC West, but this game was a last reminder of the struggles and the fire.

“We never give in,” Harbaugh said. “Keep fighting. Which our guys did today.”

There are, at most, two games left of this, the anti-climactic end for a season that never really had a chance.

Read Tim Kawakami’s Talking Points blog at blogs.mercurynews.com/kawakami. Contact him at tkawakami@mercurynews.com.