3 team dealing cooking among #Indians, Reds, Arizona. Shin-Soo Choo headed to Cincy. Asdrubal Cabrera not involved as of right now.
— paul hoynes (@hoynsie) December 11, 2012
The Reds-Indians elements appear to involved Cleveland sending Cincinnati Shin-Soo Cho and another players, while they get back Drew Stubbs and Dutch shortstop Didi Gregorius. It seems likely that they would then look to turn around and trade Gregorius to the Diamondbacks, I'd guess with one of our young pitchers going the other way. There are a couple of reasons why we might prefer Gregorius to Asdrubal Cabrera: Gregorius only made his major-league debut in September, giving us six full seasons of control, while Cabrera has only two years left. He would also be a lot cheaper - as noted earlier, Arizona appear at or near their payroll cap for now.
Indeed, with Cliff Pennington present and available, there may not necessarily be considered any need for Gregorius to start on the major-league roster, if he's thought of more as a long-term solution. The 22-year-old prospect went 6-for-20 in his major-league call-up last season, hitting .265/.324/.393 between Double-A and Triple-A in the Reds' farm system. He's very much a defense-first shortstop, which seems to tie in with organizational philosophy. There was a good report on him at Minor League Ball from October, which concluded he may need a full year in Triple-A, depending on his offensive approach.
Reds Reporter calculated Gregorius to be the consensus #6 prospect in the organization at the start of the season. There haven't been very many Dutch-born baseball players - the national team is typically strengthened with major-leaguers from Curacao, such as Randall Simon and Sidney Ponson. The best known "true" Dutchman, easily, is pitcher Burt Blyleven, but there have been no position players to play regularly. Rikkert Faneyte, an outfielder for the Giants and Rangers, saw the most, playing 80 games from 1993-1996.
And yes, he has a Twitter.