COMSTOCK PARK, Mich. – A few minutes after West Michigan had come back Wednesday from a 3-0 hole against Dayton to win 5-3 on a cool, misty day at LMCU Ballpark, Whitecaps manager Tony Cappuccilli sat at a desk in his office, a laptop in front of him that was about to be tapped full of game reports from Wednesday’s stage-show.

Cappuccilli and West Michigan have been adapting the past three weeks as MLB farm teams must adapt continually. Gone were Max Clark, Kevin McGonigle, and Josue Briceno, three of the minor leagues’ best 20-year-old hitters after they had been shipped to Double A Erie.

Cappuccilli and those always-fervid Whitecaps fans were now adjusting to a new batting order. Adjusting to their No. 3 hitter being a rising infielder named John Peck. Adjusting to Izaac Pacheco, a third baseman who three years ago was a second-round Tigers draft pick, now becoming more of a cleanup bat as he has had something of a Whitecaps revival. Adjusting, ultimately, to a shaken-up lineup obliged to do Wednesday, with their Top 100 Prospects membership wiped out by promotions, what the Whitecaps still managed to do: win, as a first-place team has been doing throughout 2025.

Cappuccilli looked up from his laptop, his salt-and-pepper whiskers adorning a 44-year-old skipper who is in his second season at West Michigan and who knows his job is to meld two responsibilities: beat opponents, but even more than triumph, to teach and mold young men in how to play a game that can be cruel in its big-league demands.

It’s all about that mysterious and magical baseball word: development.

“If we’re going to preach development to guys, we have to live it,” Cappuccilli said, taking a break from his post-game reports and his laptop surrounded by piles of data that, in 2025, is as detailed as a NASA project. “We can’t just say it – we have to live it.

“We’re going to celebrate wins, because winning is hard. But with winning comes an expectation that we’re going to play good baseball. And when we don’t, have to have conversations.”

Cappuccilli explained how teaching and execution situations can be more critical than that day’s scoreboard.

Tuesday against Dayton: The Whitecaps were down, 3-0. They stole a couple of bases in the middle innings, got a couple of hits, crawled back to make it a 3-2 game, then got four runs in the seventh and won, 6-3.

Good job, guys – on all fronts.

But in a game earlier this month, when West Michigan was down, 6-1, an unnamed player decided to steal second when the Whitecaps needed baserunners more than 90 feet of basepath edge.

Cappuccilli approached the offender, who was proud to have swiped the base:

“I know you had the base stolen,” he told his surprised violator. “But when you go to Detroit you can’t do that. That’s not how the game is played.

“As much as we want to emphasize aggression, and about running the bases fearlessly and mercilessly, there’s a point where good decisions have to be made. Because as they move up and make a mistake doing those things, the mistake is magnified.

We want guys to be aggressive. But you’ve got to understand how much the game changes as you move up. You can’t make those mistakes.”

‘We can’t play that way’

Cappuccilli was talking three days after he had gathered the lads for a similar seminar – this time after they had won a 7-6 squeaker at Peoria that otherwise had made Cappuccilli cringe, thanks to three errors, a blown save, and too many other moments of malfeasance the farm is designed to purge from good prospects.

“Sunday’s game was brutal for us,” the skipper said, referring to the July 27 head-shaker. “And we won and we still had to have a conversation as a team, because that day wasn’t the baseball we want to play.

“It’s better to have those conversations after we win. Sure, we were glad to have won, but the message was: ‘We can’t go out and play that way. You can’t get away with some of those things we did.’”

There are talented people to toast even after the “Big Three” migrated to Erie.

West Michigan has solid pitching, primarily, with starters like Andrew Sears settling in after a move from high-A Lakeland, and with bullpen pieces that have been steadily clicking: Marco Jimenez, Colin Fields, Preston Howey (now shifting to the rotation), Carlos Lequerica, Dariel Fregio, and newcomer Moises Rodriguez, all helping after Micah Ashman was promoted just ahead of being traded Thursday to the Orioles for Charlie Morton.

Shaping for the next step

As for that once-incendiary Whitecaps lineup, it has cooled, for sure, but still has fleet Seth Stephenson at the top, as well as a freshly restored outfielder and left-handed stick in Brett Callahan back after being gone since May with a damaged quad.

Peyton Graham and Jack Penney are teaming neatly in the infield with Peck, a seventh-rounder in 2023 (Pepperdine), who just turned 23 and who in 2025 has made himself one of the Tigers’ better upcoming talents: .306 heading into Sunday’s game, with a .364 on-base average, and .809 OPS. This was all before Peck socked a home run and double in his first two at-bats Sunday against Dayton.

“Peck, I think, is an elite player,” Cappuccilli said. “He’s a perfectionist. All those infielders – they’re good.

“Pacheco is having a very good season (.277/.418/.485/.903) and he’s really doing a good job, defensively, at third base. He works incredibly hard. His process, how he goes about it, is unbelievable. He’s DH today (Wednesday’s game), and because it’s a day game we have optional infield work, and he’s the first guy out there. And he’s DHing!

“It’s just part of his process. And it’s a good process – not just a thing he feels he needs to go through. He does it with a purpose and he’s had results because of it.”

Cappuccilli can rave about his infielders – because they’ve collectively played so nimbly and helped patch that roster ripped by the Clark-McGonigle-Briceno exits.

“Peyton Graham has been playing outstanding at second base, and Jack Penney – he and Peck are two of the best overall infielders around,” the skipper said. “Woody Hadeen plays all over the infield, and Woody has played some center field, too. So, it’s nice having those options.”

Options are what you become conditioned to deal with as a farm manager. Constants are few. Rosters are fluid. Your job is to take talent and shape it in such a way that it’s prepared, soon, to leave.

“If those guys go to Erie and aren’t producing, it means we’re not doing our job here,” Cappuccilli said, with a half-shrug. “It’s all about the improvements they make here so they’re able to produce there and not be overmatched.

“They need to play the game the right way, to do little things well. And show they’ve learned the things here that we value through the organization.”