With the book closing on Ellsbury, it's near time for a post mortem on the Great Splurge of 2013

It seemed a banner idea, a guaranteed success: The Yankees would recreate 2009, when three newly signed big name free agents - CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira and AJ Burnett - led the way to a championship. We'd grab three new stars, infuse the lineup with speed and power, and bag another ring. Thus, Hal Steinbrenner scrapped plans to shrink the team payroll below the then-$189 million luxury tax threshold and pulled the trigger on a set of deals that are still playing out. 

Armed with the checkbook, a newly erect Brian Cashman signed Carlos Beltran, Brian McCann and Jacoby Ellsbury for 15 years and slightly more than $300 million - a shopping spree that, until recently, remained the defining event of his career, and which still roils Cash's critics when sycophantic sportswriters debate where to hang his plaque in Cooperstown. 

Ah, but it was a complicated time, the winter of 2013-14. One year earlier, at the winter meetings, Cashman had famously whined to reporters that "Beggars can't be choosers." Now, with Joggie Cano preparing to leave, the Yankees desperately needed to save face. So Hal tabled his tax-austerity plans - the ones we're dealing with today - and threw money at the team, cobbling together a string of mediocre lineups that couldn't even win a wild card single game playoff. We are still crawling out from under those deals. And soon - maybe this month - Cashman might jettison Ellsbury, the final piece, for whatever table scraps are offered. We could finally close the book on the Great Splurge of 2013-14. Good riddance. 

Here's a brief look back on those three deals: 

McCann: The master of "pitch-framing" - (the fashionable insider-baseball skill set for catchers at the time) - he was going to be a rock behind the plate and a 100 RBI presence in our lineup for the next five years. Unfortunately, 2014 was Year I of the Defensive Over-Shifts, which robbed pull hitters of about 30 points in batting average. It turned McCann's doubles into double plays. In his best season for us, he drove in 94 runs. Last winter, we traded him to Houston, where he "pitch-framed" Astro pitchers to a pennant. Worst of all, his pivotal ground-rule double in Game Six of the ALCS broke a 0-0 tie, giving the Astros a three-run lead, from which we never recovered in that series. It was probably the most important hit in his career, and it killed us. Karma or revenge? Take your pick.

But but but... all is not lost. We traded McCann for two low single A pitchers - Albert Abreu and Jose Guzman - both of whom still show great promise. In fact, we traded Guzman -  who wowed scouts with eye-popping radar numbers in late 2017 - in the recent package for Giancarlo Stanton. Thus, McCann's Yankee legacy lives on. (Abreu, 22, also pops up in Yankee prospect rankings; hey, you never know...)

Beltran: At age 36, he returned to NYC, got off to a great start, then flipped over a wall chasing a foul ball, and looked like a total washout. In his first year, usually batting third, he hit .233 with Chase Headleyesque power. We dealt him in the Great Trade Deadline Purge of 2016 for a reclamation project named Dillon Tate. 

At one point, Tate had been one of the game's top pitching prospects, but Texas had soured on him. The Yankees planned to find his reset button and start over. Now 23, Tate has shown flashes of talent, but he was pulled from the Arizona Fall League at the last minute - never learned why - and his career make-or-break season looms. Could be that the closest we get to a Beltan legacy would be if he someday becomes the first Latino Yankee manager?

Ellsbury: Well, here we are. The latest rumors say Cashman would happily eat half of Ellsbury's $21 million per season salary if somebody - anybody - takes him. This isn't a matter of wheedling for a top prospect. We'd take Zolio Almonte and an Instant-Pot. (Any readers need a cabana boy? Pay half his salary, and he's yours.) It's a sad Yankee ending for a likable, upstanding player who - unlike his tumultuous time in redneck Boston - never saw his character publicly questioned. The problem is Ellsbury's contract, which will outlast Trump's first term. Looking back, it's hard to imagine what possessed Cashman to make that deal.

Ah, but like I said... the times, they were a-complicated. Intoxicated by the rapture of Jay-Z's new formed sports agency (remember that?) Joggy ran off to Seattle, and the Yankee front office moved into Defcon 5. Hal scrapped austerity plans, until the next luxury tax bite arrived, and then he re-declared the need to cut budget. That left us watching Yoan Moncada sign with Boston (who later converted him to Chris Sale) while the Yankees continually floundered.

Until now, right? Yeah, until now...

Now, the Yankiverse brims with hope. 

Now, our lineup brims with power. 

Now, Cashman is bound for Cooperstown, and he looks like a very stable genius to anyone with a brick in the place where memories are supposed to gather. Hope is a crazy thing, eh?