SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — For all the idle speculation, the hints, the floating rationales, the thinly backchanneled tweets and the daily ebb and flow that spanned this shoreless ocean of an offseason, the pursuit of Bryce Harper came down to two variables for the Giants.



Money.



And discipline.



Forget proximity to Harper’s Las Vegas home. Forget culture and tradition. Forget the health and hardiness of the farm system. Forget five-year-old Twitter pics of sunsets and skylines. Forget the ballparks and how well the ball does or doesn’t fly in them. Forget every selling point, every fringe benefit and every lifestyle trend.



This entire show, three months of mundane security footage that flickered to a merciful end on the final day of February, was all about extracting the largest possible sum of money from a major-league team. Agent Scott Boras was selling his most important client since Alex Rodriguez. This was his chance to take back the...