MLB

MLB, Japan league near deal for new posting system

Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball have virtually agreed on a new posting system for Japanese players, The Post has learned, meaning the Yankees’ desire to acquire pitcher Masahiro Tanaka should come to fruition very shortly. An announcement of the new system could be made shortly.

The system has been tweaked so the team posting the top bid will still win exclusive negotiating rights to the player, but now the actual price will be an average of the top two bids. In other words, if the Yankees bid $100 million and the Dodgers bid $90 million for Tanaka, then the Yankees would win the rights for a price of $95 million.

The agreement is a tradeoff for both sides. MLB wanted to limit the amount of the bids, but the NPB players union wanted their players to have a choice of teams. So the bids can still be sky-high, albeit mitigated by the second-place bid, yet the winning team still will own considerable leverage with the player because his only other option will be to return to Japan.

Once the agreement is announced, Tanaka’s team, the Rakuten Golden Eagles, still has to declare its posting of Tanaka. That is viewed as a fait accompli and should come shortly after the announcement of the agreement.

Tanaka, 25, interests the Yankees not only because of his pitching — he put up a 24-0 record and 1.27 ERA for the Rakuten Golden Eagles — but also because the posting fee doesn’t count against the luxury-tax calculation. The Yankees are determined to get their 2014 payroll under the $189 million luxury-tax threshold.

The Dodgers are viewed as the Yankees’ primary rival in the Tanaka sweepstakes.