WHYGAVS links to a Grantland article describing the great communications between the Pirates statistical researchers and the coaching staff.

Fitzgerald and Fox have discovered that coaches tend to be visual learners. “We both found that more often than not, if we can figure out a way to communicate something visually, we can show it to these guys, and then all of a sudden, the message that we were trying to get out in words in six to seven minutes, they pick up in 20 seconds,” Fitzgerald says. Even video clips can be compressed into an easily absorbed image, he adds. “Instead of saying, ‘We have 35 video clips for you to go through,’ we can say, ‘Here’s a quick heat map of what happened with all these 35.’”

That’s just one example. At least on this team, both sides are very willing to talk, listen, and learn from each other.