Puffer Escapes Career Jam With Delivery From Side

When your professional baseball career is on the brink of extinction you will try anything to keep it going.

That was the situation facing Brandon Puffer when he began this season with the Clinton Lumberkings, the Cincinnati Reds’ single-A team in Iowa.

Puffer, 23, was coming off a poor 1998 season in single-A Charleston (S.C.), going 2-7 with a 6.93 earned-run average in 29 games as a long reliever.

Even with a brief stop that season in double-A ball (seven games with Chattanooga), Puffer wasn’t showing much progress after five pro seasons. He was in danger of being released--something Minnesota, the organization that drafted him out of Capistrano Valley High in 1994, and the Angels had already done.

But Lumberkings pitching coach Andre Rabouin gave Puffer a new lease on his professional life.

Rabouin had told Puffer to change his delivery from overhand to sidearm. Puffer began the switch toward the end of last season, and took it to heart this season. The Reds also changed Puffer’s role from long relief to closer.

The results have been astonishing. Puffer currently leads the minor leagues in saves with 30. He had 24 saves by June, when the Lumberkings won the first-half pennant in the Western Division of the Midwest League.

Overall he is 1-2 with a 1.60 ERA. In 47 games, 50 2/3 innings, he has given up 39 hits and nine earned runs, walked 18 and struck out 48.

“I became a lot more effective,” Puffer said. “The ball moves a lot more naturally from that angle. Last year, throwing over the top, the ball was flat. I did not have great stuff to begin with but it did not catch up with me until last year when I was in a good hitting league.

“I would not have quit playing, but I was not naive to the fact I was on my way out.”

Rabouin had made the same suggestion to right-hander Steve Schifflet when he worked in the Kansas City Royals organization. Schifflet pitched for the Royals in 1992 after four minor league seasons.

One of the reasons Rabouin made the suggestion was he saw physical similarities in Puffer and Schifflet.

“They’re both tall and lean,” Rabouin said. “I was just a hunch. I can’t explain it; I felt if Brandon could do it, there was another opportunity for him. I had him throw a few sidearm and he got the results we were looking for.

“But if he was not up for it, he would have been released. Without [the new delivery] he was just another right-hander with a slow breaking ball.

Bob Zamora, the Capistrano Valley baseball coach, recalled that Puffer “had thrown some with a three-quarter delivery, and he had been effective. Maybe throwing overhand in the pros was wrong for him.”

But Puffer said he didn’t take the sidearm or three-quarters delivery seriously in high school. “I’d heard it was bad for your arm,” he said.

It’s been all good since the change. By going sidearm, Puffer said he feels he has added some velocity on his sinking fastball and his curve breaks sharper. Even though left-handed hitters have a better view of the pitch than right-handers do, opponents are only hitting .208 against him.

Several other Lumberking players have been promoted to higher leagues but Puffer has stayed put. “I think [the Reds] are surprised [by his success],” Puffer said. “They may want me to prove I can do it for a full season. But I don’t put too much thought in [promotions] because I can’t control that.”

Puffer will be a free agent after the 1999 season and there should be interest from other organizations besides Cincinnati.

He’s just glad he still has a future.

“My ultimate goal is the majors,” Puffer said. “I hope to get that opportunity. I don’t want to be content with just a good season in single-A.”

BRAVE NEW WORLD

Steve Sisco is a couple steps closer to the majors than Puffer, playing for the Braves triple-A Richmond team.

But Sisco, 29, in his eighth minor league season, is far from the show. The Braves, who signed Sisco as a free agent last October, have Bret Boone at his position, second base. He can play third and the outfield as well, but Atlanta is loaded there too.

No matter, Sisco thinks his chances are better with the Braves than the Kansas City Royals, who drafted him in 1992 after he played for Cal State Fullerton.

Sisco, in reaching the Royals triple-A Omaha team, did everything the Royal management asked. Last year required the biggest change; go from a line-drive hitter into a home-run slugger. Sisco, who had hit 27 homers in six previous seasons combined, cracked 20 homers in 1998.

But it wasn’t enough.

“Last year I played everything but pitcher and hit in every spot of the lineup,” Sisco said. “I had more RBI situations, and I was playing in a hitter’s league. But I don’t think I was ever in their plans. I was a safety valve in case something happened.

“That’s one reason I did not re-sign with them. It was a tough decision. I don’t know if I’ll get a September call-up with the Braves--I would have to be added to the 40-man roster--but the Braves wanted me to play my game. I’ve been very happy.”

Sisco, who is batting .315 with 12 homers, 47 RBIs, and has a team-high 110 hits, would be happier if he could get that one big chance. But he said playing pro ball has been a positive experience for him, no matter how it turns out.

“I am satisfied with the way my career is going,” he said. “I’m having a blast playing pro ball. Even if I don’t make it to the majors I have put myself in position to achieve that goal. We’ll have to wait and see if it happens.”