NEW YORK -- The prospect of acquiring Aroldis Chapman for a quartet of so-so minor leaguers was too good for the New York Yankees to pass up in December.

Likewise, the prospect of trading Chapman for one of the top prospects in the game, as well as a proven major league pitcher who has been here before, is too good for them to pass up in July.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the Yankees are in crash-and-burn mode. The lessons taught just a year ago should remind all of us that these days, a baseball season is not over by the end of July, and a new one can start as late as Aug. 1. Just ask the Toronto Blue Jays.

Whether the trade of Chapman for 19-year-old minor league shortstop Gleyber Torres, old reliable Adam Warren, minor league outfielder Billy McKinney and an unidentified fourth player is the start of a full-scale selloff remains to be seen. It is quite possible that the Yankees view Chapman the way I do, as a spare part, a tempting little toy to have in the bullpen but a bit of a redundancy when you already have Andrew Miller and Dellin Betances. Conceivably, the trade of Chapman could be their only major move of the trade deadline, MLB’s equivalent of Shark Week.

If, after moving Chapman, the Yankees make a trade for Miller, and Carlos Beltran, and Ivan Nova, and whomever else they can convince someone to take off their hands, then OK. They’re in Sell Mode.

Maybe the plan is more modest than that and, at the same time, pointed toward what only a month ago seemed like chasing fool’s gold. Like actually going for it this year.

Maybe they plan to add a prospect like Torres with an eye to the future -- he is still only in Class-A ball -- because the Yankees aren’t entirely sold on Didi Gregorius. Or maybe they are planning to convert him to second or third base, because while Starlin Castro has been good, he’s still not the replacement for Robinson Cano, and the Chase Headley deal is not likely to be remembered as one of Brian Cashman’s finest.

Then again, maybe they are stockpiling a future talent like Torres in order to repackage him for a player who can help them right now. Someone like Chris Sale, who seems to be scissoring his way out of the South Side of Chicago.

In that case, the plan may be to move only Chapman, and hope that the Yankees of the past 13 games -- the team that has won eight of 10 games from the Cleveland Indians, the Baltimore Orioles and the San Francisco Giants, first-place teams all -– are the Yankees we will see the rest of the way.

That may be a pipe dream, since the Giants had lost five straight before coming to New York and the Orioles were supposedly being ravaged by a flu-like illness. But all the Yankees need to do to support that optimism is look back to a year ago, when the Blue Jays were mired in mediocrity at 53-51 and six games back, but went onto win the division by six games.

The Blue Jays did it, of course, with a trade deadline shopping spree that netted them Troy Tulowitzki, David Price and Ben Revere.

Maybe the Yankees believe they can do it by adding one major piece -- Sale, maybe? -- and promoting kids like Aaron Judge and Luis Severino, the latter of whom provided a lift to the floundering club during the final two months of 2015.

Certainly, the Yankees are technically still close enough to the action to justify such a thing. Heading into Monday night’s games, they are still 7-1/2 games back in the American League East, but none of the three teams ahead of them looks to be running away with anything.

While they are still 4-1/2 games out of the second wild-card berth, where once they had to leapfrog a half-dozen teams to get there, now they trail only three.

See how easy would it be for an owner whose blood does indeed carry the DNA of George M. Steinbrenner III to convince himself that there is no reason to pull the plug on his team?

Logically, it may make more sense to use the Chapman trade as a kick-starter for a full-blown fire sale, but the Yankees don’t always act logically. Often, it is pride and emotion and stubbornness that guides their hand, and the ingrained belief, however misguided, that true Yankees never give up and that any season in which they are not in contention for something is nothing but a failure.

Trading Chapman, however, is eminently logical. Yes, he is a nice luxury to have, but as I pointed out when the deal was made, it was going to be nearly impossible to improve on the performance of the back end of the 2015 bullpen, when sans Chapman the Yankees' record when leading after six innings was 66-3, when leading after seven, 73-2, and after eight, 81-0.

This year, with Chapman, they are 36-3 when leading after six, 41-2 when leading after seven and 43-1 when leading after eight. So the best they can hope to do is (almost) match last year’s success, if everything goes flawlessly; already, they are one loss worse after eight innings.

Chapman really hasn’t made much of a difference.

Where he has made an impact is in the excitement he brings to the fans when the scoreboard flashes the eye-popping radar gun readings -- 101, 102, 103, even on a couple of occasions, 105.

In terms of sheer performance, he has not been as good as Miller or Betances, both of whom have higher WARs and strikeout rates. In fact, Betances and Miller are among the top three rated relievers in baseball by wins above replacement.

And both Miller and Betances are under team control for the foreseeable future, Betances arbitration-eligible for the first time in 2017 and Miller under contract through 2018 for a very affordable $9 million a year.

Chapman, on the other hand, is a free agent this winter and will command the kind of deal that chokes the Yankees' payroll and drives their fan base nuts.

Flipping Chapman for a top prospect, a reliable and versatile big league pitcher and, in effect, Castro -- who was acquired for Warren in the offseason -- is a smart move by the Yankees.

And it might just be the only move they want, or need, to make this season.