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WASHINGTON -- Jayson Werth knew this seasons NL Division Series defeat following a division title felt different from the same scenarios that played out for the Washington Nationals a couple of other times recently.How so?I dont know, the teams left fielder said, then repeated that phrase in a silent, somber clubhouse in the early hours of Friday after a 4-3 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 5. Words are not really coming to me to describe it. Its pretty heavy. Its going to take some time to digest.For the third time in five years, Werth and Washington won the NL East. And for the third time in five years, they failed to win a postseason series.Now comes an offseason with some familiar questions about when, or even if, the 37-year-old Werth and other members of the core group thats been around for these early exits can take the next step.A lot of people have played baseball a lot longer than me and never even made the playoffs. I cherish getting to the playoffs. Everyone wants to win the World Series. Everyone wants to, obviously, get to the next level and get in a deep postseason run. The truth of the matter is, its really hard to do. You have to obviously play well, get some lucky breaks and have a few things go your way, said first baseman Ryan Zimmerman, the Nationals very first amateur draft pick more than a decade ago. I think we should look at the positives and look what weve done in the last five years. Obviously, were all disappointed right now. But weve done a lot of good things.Dusty Baker was the latest manager to get Washington into the postseason but not to an NL Championship Series, pulling all the right strings during his first regular season with the team but seeing some moves not quite pan out against LA, especially in Game 5.That added to his decade-plus, four-club track record of failing to win games that would have concluded a series.In the aftermath of elimination, Baker was asked whether its inevitable that a team or a city goes through difficult moments before getting to a championship.You do have to go through some pain. Its not a very pleasant pain. Ive gone through that pain a few times now, Baker said. But you have to persevere. Thats the story of life. Its how you deal with the down times and how you deal with pain. And if you just keep persevering, then something will happen, something good will happen. You cant stop trying. You cant stop trying to reach your goal.Here is what else to know about the Nationals 2016 season and upcoming offseason:STRASBURGS ELBOW: For the second time in his major league career, Stephen Strasburg sat out a postseason because of his right elbow. In 2012, it was because the right-hander was shut down 13 months after Tommy John surgery. This season, it was because Strasburg hurt his arm . His $175 million, seven-year contract kicks in next season, so the Nationals -- and fans -- will hold their breath waiting to find out how badly hes injured. As became clear against the Dodgers, without Strasburg, there is nothing October-ready about the rotation beyond Max Scherzer -- and the Nationals lost both games the NL Cy Young Award favorite started in the NLDS.HARPERS HEALTH: Bryce Harper went from being the youngest unanimous MVP in baseball history in 2015 to a bit of a mystery in 2016. His numbers went way down to a .243 average, 24 homers, 86 RBI in the regular season, and he had only one RBI in the playoffs. The big question is whether he or the Nationals will ever explain exactly what his health status was -- because if he wasnt badly compromised by injury, then his lack of production at the plate becomes a lot more worrisome.BULLPEN PROBLEMS: Time to rebuild the relief corps again. Closer Mark Melancon and middleman Marc Rzepczynski can become free agents (as can catcher Wilson Ramos , who had right knee surgery Friday). Setup man Shawn Kelley left Game 5 with numbness in his throwing hand. While the bullpen was spotless through three games against the Dodgers, it blew leads in Games 4 and 5 losses, the same old October story for this team.TURNERS EMERGENCE: The best news for Washington might be the emergence of rookie Trea Turner, who batted .342 with 13 homers, 40 RBI and 33 steals despite only 307 at-bats and while learning to play center field. Fake Yeezy . 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If it wasnt Anil Kumble crushing their hopes, it was Shane Warne, Muttiah Muralitharan, Mushtaq Ahmed, Saeed Ajmal or one of many, many more. Even Chris Gayle took a five-for against them at one stage.So we probably shouldnt have been surprised when Yasir Shah ripped through Englands middle order here. He claimed the wicket of every England batsman from No. 3 to No. 7 and has every chance of adding more over the weekend.The concern for England is that this pitch - this second day pitch on which Moeen Ali could not turn the ball an inch - will probably be the least helpful surface that Yasir encounters this series. It was just the second five-wicket haul in a Test against England at Lords this century - Daniel Vettori took the other one in 2008 - and was achieved in conditions where the ball hardly turned. It suggests that, in conditions providing more assistance to spin bowlers, England are in real trouble. And for a side due to tour Bangladesh and India later this year, that must be a worry.Like Warne and Murali before him, Yasir fulfils a dual role for his side. Capable of producing, even in the first innings, wicket-taking deliveries, he also possesses the control and stamina to operate as a holding bowler. It is his ability to bowl long, inexpensive spells (he has an economy-rate of 2.55 in this match to date) that allows Pakistan to go into games with a four-man attack. By hardly delivering a poor ball, ensuring most of his deliveries will hit the stumps and varying his pace and angle just a little, he provides the side balance. Any criticism of England has to be mitigated by the realisation that he may well be the best spin bowler in the world.He also poses a dilemma for opposition batsmen. They can allow him to tie them down - as England allowed Ajmal and Abdur Rehman to tie them down in Abu Dhabi in 2012 on the way to being dismissed for 72 (they scored just 21 from their first 15 overs) - or they can try to disrupt his plans and hit him off a length, as Joe Root tried here.Roots top-edged slow-sweep looked ugly. But one of Roots great strengths - indeed, one of the strengths of this England team - is their bold approach. We cannot applaud them for their audacity and then scold them for carelessness when it goes awry just as we cannot criticise them for timidity and then complain when the bravery backfires. While Root might reflect that the choice of stroke - trying to fetch one from outside off stump through midwicket - was unnecessarily aggressive, he has scored vast quantities of runs over the last couple of years with that approach. It needs curbing only a little for the runs to flow.While Gary Ballance and Moeen Ali were dismissed by leg-breaks that turned enough to defeat their strokes, most of Englands batsmen were undone by Yasirs accuracy and natural variation. Perhaps the ball to Root was flighted a little more; perhaps the ball to Jonny Bairstow was pushed through a little quicker. But James Vince, attempting to turn one through the leg side, missed a straight one and when Bairstow played back to a full delivery that scuttled through his forcing shot it brought back memories of the way Kumble dismissed another Yorkshire and England keeper, Richard Blakey, back in 1993. Little, it seems, has changed.Spin bowling will probably always be secondary to seam in England. The conditions naturally provide more assistance to seamers. If you grow up wanting to bowling spin in a wet summer like this, you might not have touched the ball yet. Seam, sadly, is often all that is required other than to pick-up the over-rate and offer some variation of angle or pace.ddddddddddddBut the situation does appear to have worsened in recent years and Englands spin-bowling cupboard has never been so bare. Men like Eddie Hemmings and Norman Gifford, who were limited to a handful of Tests each a generation or two ago, would bedazzle and bamboozle today.There are many reasons for Englands current issues with playing, or bowling, spin. One of them was the ECBs decision to reward the counties for fielding young players which pushed a generation of experienced cricketers - not least spinners, who often enjoy the best years of their careers a little later than batsmen or seamers - into premature retirement. While it would be an exaggeration to claim that many bowlers of genuine Test potential were squeezed out of the game, it is fair to state that several good county professionals who might have tested developing batsmen and passed on tips to developing bowlers have disappeared.At the same time, there was a fashion in county cricket to produce green surfaces to assist the army of seamers that England breeds. That has resulted in few opportunities for young spinners (Ravi Patel, the Middlesex bowler rated by some judges as the most exciting spin prospect in the land, has not played a first-class this season and hardly played last year) and a reluctance from counties to invest in players they know will be of limited use to them.There is also a theory that the development of a young spinner in first-class cricket can be arrested by the requirements of limited-overs cricket. So, at a time when young spinners might be learning how to build long spells or experimenting with flight and bowling in different conditions, they are instead obliged to fire the ball in to prevent being slogged in a T20 match. And with the finances of the game increasingly geared to the white-ball formats, the counties seem more interested in developing players who bat a bit, field well and can bowl a couple of tight overs of spin instead of specialists. Would Monty Panesar still be able to forge a career if he was starting out today? Ravi Patels experience would suggest he might struggle.The ECB have taken steps to improve the situation. They have encouraged counties to produce better pitches (allowing visiting captains the option of bowling first in the Championship was designed, in part, to encourage spinners) and they are providing every bit of assistance they can to any developing young spinner: specialist coaching; overseas experience; exposure to the England squad at an early stage. But these things take time and, in the meantime, a generation of county batsmen are developing without encountering much high-class spin in the domestic game. Bowlers like Yasir feast on their inexperience. R Ashwin must be salivating at the thought of them.With a second innings to come, it is a bit too early to speculate on whether England will change their batting line-up before Manchester. Trevor Bayliss has repeated his theory that he would rather give a player a Test too many rather than one too few so it may be that Vince, in particular, is given a longer opportunity to prove himself.But, with Ben Stokes fit to return for Old Trafford, it is likely someone must make way. One option is drop a bowler - James Anderson is already likely to return ahead of Steven Finn - and another is to bring in either another spinner or a different one. Given Englands struggles against spin - and Stokes has some issues to resolve against such bowling - it may be they prefer to replace another seamer, presumably Jake Ball, with Stokes and strengthen the batting. Whichever way you look at it, though, Vince needs some runs in the second innings. ' ' '