By Fitzgerald Cecilio

Arlington, TX

The Texas Rangers have given free-agent Josh Hamilton a one-year qualifying offer worth $13.3 million, which the slugger expects to decline.

The Rangers made the offer so it could get a compensatory pick in next year's MLB draft in case Hamilton leaves. The pick would come after the first round and in the order of how clubs finished this past season.

Aside from Hamilton, the Rangers did not make offers to any other free agents, including catcher Mike Napoli.

Hamilton, the 2010 AL MVP, can start talking to teams about possible deals starting midnight. Last year, Hamilton received $13.75 million qualifying offer from the Rangers.

The Rangers can still negotiate with Hamilton but general manager Jon Daniels said the club is mapping out scenarios for life with and without the slugger.

"You can count them on one hand that the guys you can truly replace Josh's production with, and I don't expect any of them to be available," Daniels said. "It's going to have an impact if he's not back. "

"If Josh is not back, we're not going to try to replace him. I don't think that's a productive way of going about it. We'll try to put the best team out there we can. I like our chances if Josh is back and we've got some work to do, but I like our chances if he's not," he added.

The 31-year-old Hamilton hit .285 with 43 homers and 128 RBIs in 148 games, his most since 2008.

Daniels said the Rangers decided not to make a qualifying offer to Napoli, who made $9.4 million in 2012, as they determined that $13.3 million was too high to pay for him at this point.

Napoli hit .227 with 24 homers and 56 RBIs last season, far from his 2011 numbers of .320 with 30 homers and 75 RBIs.

"He's been a big part of this club for a couple of years and we'd like to have him back," Daniels said. "But for the first move of the offseason to be effectively having him back at that number was not something we wanted to do right now. He may have declined (it). I would imagine they'll be a good deal of interest in him out there. You've got to be OK with it either way and we didn't want to start the offseason making that investment at that dollar number."

 

 

Rangers Give $13.3M Qualifying Offer to Slugger Josh Hamilton