The Cincinnati Reds are expected to pick up Brandon Phillips‘ $12 million option, if they can’t work out a long-term deal with the second baseman Jon Heyman of Sports Illustrated reports.

Back in September, we learned that the team planned to bring back Phillips in 2012 and that both parties had preliminary talks about a contract extension in February. As late as June, talks between the two had not started up again.

Phillips hit .300/.353/.457 with 18 HR’s and 82 RBI’s in 610 AB’s with the Reds in 2011.

Image by Keith Allison under the Creative Commons License.