Lehmann

“I feel bad for these guys,” bench coach Danny Lehmann, a key voice in the team’s game-planning meetings, said of the challenges Yamamoto and other Japanese imports face early in their MLB careers.

The playoffs, Lehmann said, afforded the team’s so-called “run-prevent department” to take a deeper dive with each starting pitchers.

From that process, Lehmann recalled, “we got to get to know him a little bit better, and what he wants to do.”

In Division Two, Northamptonshire have turned to former Australia head coach Lehmann while Glamorgan have handed the reins to Richard Dawson as interim for the season, although his commitments with Welsh Fire in The Hundred mean he will be absent for the One-Day Cup campaign.

Northamptonshire have South African batter Matthew Breetzke available for the first eight games and, in Ben Sanderson, have one of the most consistent wicket-takers around, but their most important move over the winter was surely the arrival of head coach Darren Lehmann.