Available First Base Options for the Yankees

The New York Yankees have seemingly lost Mark Teixeira for a bulk of the 2016 season, best case scenario, or for all of the 2016 season, the likeliest scenario, and have found themselves exposed on their roster. The team did very little to address their first base depth problem after losing Greg Bird to a shoulder injury and now find themselves trying to patch together the first base position once again. Dustin Ackley is gone, Robert Refsnyder is learning the position and Chris Parmelee, not Nick Swisher, has been called up from Triple-A to serve as a warm body but what if the Yankees aren't happy with this combination of players? Are there any presumably available players that can fill the void either by trade or free agent signing to help fill the position for New York?

The first place I went to when looking to do some research for this blog post was MLB Trade Rumors list of free agents for the 2016-2017 season and the pickings were slim to say the least. Most options are either on teams that aren't looking to sell, Justin Smoak (TOR), Carlos Santana and Mike Napoli (CLE), James Loney (NYM), and Edwin Encarnacion to name a few, so I went a little above and beyond and scoured the Independent League to find a familiar face and a face we may see before the end of the season.

I have to admit I didn't scour the entire Independent League and instead stuck to the Lancaster Barnstormers, the former team for Phil Coke. While looking at their roster I saw a pair of players who on their own aren't game changers but may both be better options than Parmelee and Swisher. The reason behind my thinking that the Yankees may need a new minor league deal is that Swisher owns a June 15th opt out date in his minor league contract and may choose to try and latch on with another club here in less than two weeks. The two members of the Barnstormers who could potentially replace Swisher and/or Parmelee down in Triple-A are former Yankees prospect Josh Bell and Kevin Ahrens.

Rk	Name	Age	G	PA	R	H	2B	HR	RBI	SB	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
1	Kevin Ahrens	27	40	171	20	47	8	4	29	4	16	27	.307	.374	.451	.825
2	Josh Bell#	29	37	161	20	37	11	4	24	0	20	26	.266	.360	.446	.806

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Like I said neither of them are going to propel the team back to the top of the division but both may be better options than Parmelee or a vacant Swisher. What say you?