Yu Darvish, via Twitter, has indicated six teams are pursuing him in free agency, and Brian Cashman has copped that the Yankees remain among the interested.

But it would take creativity for the Yankees to sign Darvish and even with the below plan, they still might have to find a way to offload a piece of Jacoby Ellsbury’s contract or deal David Robertson as a way to stay below the $197 million luxury-tax threshold.

The question is: How can Darvish get what he wants while the Yankees keep the average annual value (the number used for luxury-tax purposes) down?

We have to begin with a few suppositions, namely that Darvish has yet to hear the terms he wants or hear them from a team to which he wants to go, or else why would he still be unsigned three weeks into the new year? The general expectation was that he would get $25 million-ish annually for six years when this offseason began.

My concept would be to offer Darvish a six-year, $120 million deal that is structured this way: $30 million in each of the first two seasons, $20 million in the middle two and $10 million in the final two, with Darvish having opt-outs after Years 2 and 4.

Darvish has $120 million guaranteed. If he is healthy and pitching well, he can opt out after two years in which he averaged $30 million a season or four years in which he averaged $25 million.

The key for the Yankees in this structure is that for tax purposes, they would get charged $20 million in 2018 — the average value of $120 million spread over six seasons.

If Darvish, say, opted out after the 2019 season, the Yankees would be hit with what is termed a “true-up charge.” That is the difference between what Darvish was actually paid in 2018-19 ($60 million) and what the Yanks paid toward the tax ($40 million). But the key for the Yanks is that $20 million “true-up charge” is placed on their 2020 payroll. In 2018, Darvish’s salary for luxury-tax purposes remains $20 million, although he is paid $30 million.

I asked both the Commissioner’s Office and the Players Association if this deal would be scuttled for purposeful circumvention of the tax, and neither side suggested it would be.

And look, this is just me guesstimating what Darvish would need. But maybe it is even less. If, for example, the Yankees could pay Darvish $50 million over the first two years, then the salary for luxury-tax charge drops to $18.3 million at a time when the Yankees will be counting every penny to stay under the threshold.