Bring Back Daniel Palka and other moves

June 22, 2019

Yep, before you say it, I am biased. Daniel Palka has shown a ton of love to the 108 since he came up. We appreciate that and we’d love to see him here because of it. However, I’d like to walk through a few moves that can be made to improve the team without a trade.

Daniel Palka
One of the biggest disappointments this year has been Yonder Alonso‘s production. Couple that with the possibility of his option vesting and there is a need to DFA him as quickly as possible. The problem is we don’t have anyone else to play 1B behind Abreu. Except, we do. Of Palka’s 600 or so minor league games, he’s played roughly 30% of them at 1B. This year, he’s played 10 games there. So drop Alonso, move Palka to the big league club. The timing is great, because you can audition both Palka and Collins as the lefty DH. If one doesn’t work out, they go down when Welington Castillo comes back. If they both do well, I have no problem sending Beef packing. If neither does well, you haven’t really gotten worse.

Dylan Cease
This has been the talk of Twitter, but to be honest, he’s not having a great year. However, the back end of the rotation is a damn atrocity. Let’s take a chance on this guy and see if he can work things out at the big league level.

Jon Jay
It seems by all accounts that he is healthy now. Still, they seem to be keeping him in AAA for an extended period. Bring him up and replace Tilson in the lineup. Jay could act as your leadoff hitter, hopefully getting on base around his career mark of 35% of the time.

Roster
Your roster looks like this after these changes and when Ryan Burr, Dylan Covey, and Manny Banuelos come back from injury, you’ll have some additional changes to make:

Position Players
Abreu 1B
Yolmer 2B
Timmy SS
Moncada 3B
Jay RF
Garcia CF
Jimenez LF
Palka DH
McCann C