The thing about being a spring training sub as a youngster, Ian Kinsler explains, is your mind can wander. That’s when Buck Showalter would strike.

“I remember Buck walking up to me one day about the sixth inning — the lull of the game — and asking me to look him in the eye,” Kinsler said by phone recently. “He says, ‘Tell me the score. Tell me who’s hitting. Tell me who’s pitching. Tell me who’s on deck. Tell me if there’s a guy in the bullpen. How many outs? What’s the count?’ And I’m trying to look at the scoreboard. He said, ‘Keep looking at me.’

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“He walked away and said, ‘That’s what I expect of you.’

“That’s how he works, that’s how he operates.”

For any player, breaking into the major leagues is the fulfillment of a dream — and a supremely stressful time. As Showalter is fond of saying, going from Triple A to the majors is the largest leap in sports. Both Francisco Álvarez and Brett Baty are going through that challenge for the Mets right now; perhaps Ronny Mauricio and Mark Vientos will follow at some point this season.

Given that context, we talked to a half-dozen players who broke into the big leagues with Showalter as their manager. What is it like to be a rookie playing for this specific manager? What does he want from you, and how can you tell? How do you earn his trust?

These are their stories and their counsel.

Zack Britton (played for Showalter from 2011 to 2018): Bobby Dickerson was my (Triple-A) manager, and we had a team meeting right when we hired (Showalter) and he said, “The culture here is going to change in this organization. You just wait and see.” I can remember that speech, and I was 22. I was like, “Wow.” We hadn’t been very good for a long time.

Trey Mancini (2016-2018): His reputation definitely precedes him.

Ryan Flaherty (2012-2017): Right away, he’s got a presence about him.

Caleb Joseph (2014-2018): Boy I tell you, you talk about a dramatically different major-league spring training experience, wow! It was just totally different. First day, first sets of drills, the expectations were different, the attention to detail was different.

It is basically impossible to talk about Showalter for five minutes and not hear the phrase “attention to detail.”

Joseph: You can’t get anything past him. You can’t get anything past him. If you’re the first guy there, he knows. If you’re the first guy to leave the park, he knows. If you’re not prepping for the next game the way you should be, he has a way of knowing that. He has an uncanny sense of his players.

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Ian Kinsler (2006): He was responsible for giving me No. 5. He would look at a player and the way they played and decide, “This guy’s a No. 5.” We had no choice. That’s how much the attention to details mattered to him.

Britton: He had all the pitchers play every infield position because he wanted you to know where the infielder was going to be when you were pitching. … It actually made me a better fielder, because I wasn’t that good considering how many ground balls they hit.

Joseph: I learned so much about the game that I didn’t realize was available. You play baseball for 15 to 20 years, so much comes across your plate, you don’t feel like you can learn a lot. In terms of the details of the game, the strategy of the game, I was blown away how little I actually knew about that. That really changed when I had my first spring training with Buck.

Manny Machado (2012-2018): I don’t think there’s any other manager out there that’s going to prepare you as well as Buck does.

Flaherty: One of Buck’s strengths, particularly with young players, is he puts them in positions to succeed. It gives young players confidence that they’re in the situation Buck’s put them in and it’s going to give them a chance to succeed.

Machado: The thing about Buck, he does that for the minor leagues. We’re instructed that way from the beginning. What was being run in the big leagues was going to be run in the minor leagues. That helped you once you got to the big leagues. You just fall in line.

Mancini: He definitely set such a good precedent in the organization of doing the little things right and just being ready to go.

Kinsler: He had a really good feel for me as a player early. He’d hit me in the nine-hole to start the season, he’d pinch-hit for me against really good closers. The feel he has for protecting a player a little bit in their first big-league action is really good.

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Does it actually feel that way in the moment?

Kinsler: I hated that at the time. You never understand that as a player. Now looking back and knowing what I know, you start to understand those things. It’s disappointing when those things happen, but in hindsight you look back and it all makes sense.

Flaherty: He takes situations that aren’t black and white and he’ll make them black and white. “It’s going to happen this way and it’s going to work for that reason.”

Flaherty recalled a famous example.

Flaherty: We’re in Detroit and it’s the ALDS, and (Nick) Castellanos is coming to the plate as the winning run, and there’s some doubt probably in Britton’s mind. Buck calls timeout and walks to the mound. I was there as the third baseman. He goes, “Look, we’re going to walk this guy, next guy’s going to hit a double play and we’ll get the hell out of here.”

Britton: That’s exactly what he did. I didn’t need to say anything. I just nodded my head.

Britton induced a double play from Hernán Pérez to end the series.

Britton: There’s that trust there and you could feel that.

“Trust” is another big word that comes through. When you’re just breaking into the majors, how do you earn it from Showalter?

Machado: It took a long time. Probably still now! … I was never comfortable in the big leagues when I was around him. You have to be perfect, you have to be by the book.

Joseph: He just wants to know: Who are you? What do you bring to the club? Can I trust you’re going to bring that every day?

Britton: A lot of it was just paying attention. He was always making sure you were paying attention. If you were a young player, he always thought you should be watching and learning. He would come up to you at some point in the game in a big situation and ask, “What would you do here?”

Britton chuckled when he heard about Kinsler’s story. “He won’t let you look at the scoreboard,” he said. Baty smiled at that, too: “He keeps you in the game, for sure, when you’re not playing.”

Kinsler:  A lot of it is your mental capacity and not making mental mistakes. He’s not too much of a results-based manager. If you’re prepared every day and you’re mentally pretty sharp and not making too many mental mistakes as a young player, he’s going to respect you.

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Flaherty: He definitely does demand a lot from young players, but not necessarily from a production standpoint. It’s the smaller things that are going to irritate him. If you can handle those smaller things, if you can show you’re a heads-up player and you understand situations and you understand the scoreboard — he can live with the rest.

Joseph: I’ll never forget (my big-league debut), I went in and sat in the manager’s office. He congratulated me on making it. The next thing he said was, “I just want you to know: I couldn’t care less if you get a single hit. Right now, this team needs you to handle and manage the pitching staff. If you can’t do that, we will find somebody else who will. Are we clear?”

Joseph remembered mixing up a pair of signs in that first big-league game.

Joseph: He has a look, and he doesn’t have to say anything. You just know you’ve got to tighten it up. … That’s when I knew I’ve got to lock it in. It’s those types of things he’s looking at.

When do you realize you have Showalter’s trust? For Britton, it was getting called into the manager’s office and told he might close that night.

Britton: I was like, “Oh, he’s explaining what he wants to do. I’m involved in it.” That night, I got the save opportunity and I rolled with it from there. That was the first time I felt like I was in that little circle of trust.

Joseph: Asking my opinion, especially when it involved pitchers, that was when you felt that you’ve entered into an area of trust. He knows the answer he wants anyways, but when he takes your opinion and implements it, then wow.

Britton: For me, it actually felt like you were a stable major leaguer. You were a guy that was important to the team and not a guy that was going to bounce around the minors.

Joseph: Feeling like you’ve finally earned it? Boy, it’s almost like getting your first hit in the big leagues. It’s a great feeling. … Once you earn the trust, he’ll back you and is behind you 100 percent. It’s just a little bit of a process to earn it.

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Britton: It’s kind of like an open book after the fact; maybe not when you’re in the moment. Looking back, it’s pretty obvious when you have his trust and when you don’t.

So, what’s the best advice for Álvarez, for Baty, for Mauricio and Vientos if they get the call this season?

Britton: Listen. Observe. He wants to know that you have a routine. When you’re at the field, what are you doing to get better? If you do the small things and the little details right, you’re going to be fine.

Joseph: Be who you are and bring what you bring. Pretty simple, but very hard to do sometimes.

Machado: Do everything possible to be who you are.

Kinsler: Be prepared. Be ready.

— The Athletic’s Patrick Mooney contributed to this story.