By John Fay
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Reds general manager Dan O'Brien spent his first 10 days on the job learning all he can about his new ballclub.

Very shortly, he'll begin reshaping it.

The general manager meetings are next week in Phoenix. A lot of preliminary trade talks begin there, and O'Brien will listen to offers for anyone, including Ken Griffey Jr.

"I'm not going to focus on any one player," O'Brien said. "But as an organization as a whole, when you are coming off a year where you won 69 games, you have to be open-minded in looking at ways to improve the club.

"There's not going to be, so to speak, any untouchables."

The Reds have three veteran players under contract beyond 2004 - Griffey, Sean Casey and Danny Graves. Griffey's salary of $12.5 million will account for about one-fourth of the player payroll. Casey ($6.8 million) and Graves ($6 million) account for another quarter.

But given his injury history, Griffey's trade value is not likely to be very high.

Trading Griffey, Graves or Casey would give the Reds significantly more leeway to add free agents for next season. The Reds figure to have $5 million to $8 million to plug holes in the roster through free agency, if the player payroll is in the high $40 millions as expected.

"It's premature to speculate what our role in the free agent market will be," O'Brien said. "It's very preliminary, but the market seems to be moving slow. We're going to take a genuine look at free agents."

But the Reds probably will wait before making a run at any players.

O'Brien said the Reds won't be in the market for top free agents - the ones who under the collective bargaining agreement require compensation in draft picks.

"Given that our focus is on developing talent internally, that would be counterproductive," he said.

So don't look for the Reds to be in play for a big star like Vladimir Guerrero, an ace like Kevin Millwood or even a good infielder like Luis Castillo.

More than 200 players have filed for free agency. But there will be another group going to market later. Players who aren't offered arbitration by their club by Dec. 7 become free agents.

"That will really expand the market," O'Brien said.

O'Brien has put the manager search on hold until after the GM meetings. O'Brien did speak to interim manager Dave Miley last week.

"We spoke for about an hour and a half," O'Brien said. "I wanted to get his impression of our players. I did explain to him that he was indeed a legitimate candidate. I asked him for patience.

"It was a great conversation."

O'Brien has talked about other candidates with the Reds' staff.

"We want the list to be a reasonable number and do our homework," O'Brien said. "But we haven't narrowed the list yet."

The priority now is cleaning up the roster. Clubs must submit their reserve list by Nov. 20. Players not on the reserve list can be picked in the Rule 5 Draft by other clubs.

"We're systematically moving forward on that," O'Brien said. "We had a number of players on the 60-day disabled list. We're working to get some roster flexibility."

The Reds opened a spot Tuesday when they released Ryan Dempster, which left the roster at 38. The Reds also will have to promote some prospects to the 40-man or risk losing them to Rule 5.

Everyone on the baseball operations staff remains in the same role they occupied under former general manager Jim Bowden.

"As we speak, things are status quo," O'Brien said. "We have not had time to address that. There have been other priorities."