MLB

Japanese team might hold on to Tanaka

Masahiro Tanaka began this offseason as an apparent Yankee-to-be. By the time Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball finish the details of a new posting system, the right-hander might wind up right back where he started — in Japan.

Yozo Tachibana, the president of the Rakuten Golden Eagles, told Sponichi (a Japanese newspaper) his team might retain Tanaka due to the considerably lowered posting parameters, assuming a deal finally gets done.

“We have an obligation to explain to our stakeholders whether it’s fair,” Tachibana reportedly said to Sponichi. If Rakuten shareholders don’t think the proposed rules are fair, he added, “There’s a possibility we won’t take the next step.”

As The Post’s Joel Sherman reported on Wednesday, the posting rules have been revised dramatically since MLB’s small-market owners blew up a near-completed plan on Nov. 14. That agreement would have been quite similar to the previous one, by which teams could bid as high as they wanted, blindly, for the exclusive negotiating rights to the player. Now, the maximum bid could be as low as $20 million, with the player then having the right to negotiate among all the teams that bid at that level. That figures to raise Tanaka’s salary considerably, and it could take the Yankees — mindful of their goal to stay under the $189 million luxury-tax threshold in 2014 — out of the mix.

The new rules would mean far less income for the Japanese team selling the player, and that’s why the Eagles simply could keep Tanaka for two more years (until he’s eligible for free agency) and benefit from having him as a pitcher.

However, one person with knowledge of the posting negotiations said, on the condition of anonymity, the Eagles likely still would post Tanaka.