I never jump straight into coaching when I visit our minor league clubs. The first thing I do is watch and listen. I call it collecting coins. Collecting coins means learning who the players actually are. Two parents in the house growing up? Just mom? Any mentors? Did they love school or struggle with it? What do they do when it's raining and they're stuck inside? Because here's what I figured out after a long time in the game: before you can ever coach a man, you have to know a man. You can have the best practice plan in baseball and lose a player completely because he never felt like you saw him as anything more than a roster spot. Collect the coins. Know who you've got. Everything you teach lands harder once you've done that work.