By John Fay
The Cincinnati Enquirer

One factor that's gotten little attention in all the dire predictions about the Reds for 2004 - The Sporting News rates them as the worst team in baseball - is the Dave Miley factor.

Can Miley make a difference?

The players think so.

"I think he can," closer Danny Graves said. "Miley is a guy who players like to play for. He says let's play. He wants you to play hard and have fun."

"You could talk to every guy in here and not one would have a problem with Miley," first baseman Sean Casey said. "He has everyone's respect. They listen to him."

Miley, to use that overused term, is old school. He's a baseball guy who learned how to manage in the minors.

He doesn't try to re-invent the game and he doesn't overmanage. A lot of players think former manager Bob Boone tried to do both.

Boone's approach obviously didn't work. He was 190-238 (.444) in his 21/2 years as the Reds' manager.

And Boone started each year with better talent than Miley has this year.

Miley can't do anything about the talent level of the players he's been given. But what he's done is address the issues he can control.

What he saw after he took over the Reds on July 28 of last season was a team that was fundamentally unsound, a team that struggled defensively, a team that couldn't get bunts down, a team that missed signs, and a team of free swingers who struck out when groundouts would have gotten a run in.

Camp Miley addressed those issues.

"We stressed fundamentals," he said. "The guys have been great about it. But it's not something we're going to forget about. We're going to work on it during the year."

Don Gullett has been on the coaching staff of six Reds managers. He's seen a big difference this spring.

"I see a different attitude," he said. "A lot of issues have been addressed. The players are taking the attitude that these things can help us get better."

The Reds didn't do anything radical this spring. It was more a matter of what was stressed.

"There's no secret on how to play the game," Gullett said. "You have to play it as team, without selfishness. When you do that, you go out and expect to win - not wondering if you can."

Spring training results mean little, but the Reds did win this spring. They closed the exhibition season 18-16-1, their first winning spring since 1997.

"That's a new thing around here," Casey said.

Miley is a hands-off manager when it comes to coaching. Chris Chambliss is hitting coach, and Miley made it clear no other coaches are to work with hitters.

Gullett runs the pitching side of things.

"He lets us go out and teach and do our jobs," Gullett said.

Gullett's mandate to the pitching staff has been simple: Throw strikes.

It worked this spring. Starting pitching, considered by most to be the weakness of the club, has been outstanding.

As for Chambliss, he's made strides, too. If you had to identify three players who needed work going to the spring, Adam Dunn, Jason LaRue and Wily Mo Pena would have been near the top of the list.

Dunn went in Saturday hitting .392 with six home runs and a club-best 14 RBI. Pena was hitting .328 with three homers and 11 RBI. And LaRue was hitting .296 with three homers and nine RBI.

Miley's managerial record speaks for itself. He was 1,115-841 (.570) in the minors. His teams finished worse than third only once. Counting split seasons, his clubs finished first or second 18 times in 21 tries.

"Guys respond to him," Casey said. "You want to go out and play hard for a guy like Miley."

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E-mail jfay@enquirer.com