A-Rod's Dinner Table Signals There's Still Room for J Lo

Alex Rodriguez seemingly had an ulterior motive in sharing a nice photo of himself having dinner with his daughters -- sending a not-so-subtle signal to Jennifer Lopez.

A-Rod posted the pic Thursday night -- a pretty delicious-looking dinner spread with his teenage daughters, Tasha and Ella, and captioned it ... "Din din with my girls! #DaddyDinnerDate."

Sweet, right? Yes, it is ... buuut, it's kinda hard to ignore the fact he left 3 extra table settings and 3 empty chairs in the shot as well.

So, either A-Rod was expecting 3 more people to show up ... or he's pining for J Lo and her 2 kids, Max and Emme, to come back and be a big happy blended family again.

We're gonna go with the latter.

As you know, Jennifer has been cozying up with her famous ex, Ben Affleck, following her split from Alex ... though we're told the momentum for Bennifer 2.0 actually began building back in February.