In August, I spent most of two days traveling from Abu Dhabi to Southern California, and on my third night there I went to Angel Stadium — specifically to see Mike Trout play baseball.

Four of us went to the game. The other three were there because I wanted to see Mike Trout; they would not have been there if I had not asked them to come, and I would not have been there if Mike Trout did not exist. I don’t recall what we spent, while in the stadium, but it was a considerable amount of money.

To see Mike Trout.

He was worth the time and money because in 2012 Trout had one of the greatest seasons in recent baseball history, and the best recorded by a 20-year-old player. I wanted to see a slice of that.

Trout was the unanimous rookie of the year, and if you evaluate it by the “wins above replacement” statistic, he apparently had the 20th-best season in the history of ball.

And how did the Angels reward him?

By giving him a raise to $510,000, which is only $20,000 above the Major League minimum.

Why did the Angels do that? Pretty much because they can. A player of Trout’s limited experience is not eligible for arbitration or free agency until after the 2014 and 2017 seasons, respectively.

Is it “right” in a moral sense? No, it is not. Trout was the Angels’ best player, and he will be one of the lowest-paid players on the team. Middle relievers will make many times more money than he will.

Is it within the Angels’ rights, and perhaps the correct thing to do, from an expense perspective? Yes, it is.

I wonder if Angels fans reacted to this with the same line of thinking I did: By low-balling Trout, the Angels can help pay for their aging mistake — Albert Pujols, who is entering Year 2 of that 10-year, $254-million contract.

They will be giving Pujols $16 million this year, and $23 million next (when he will be 34). And he just had his least impressive season.

Jerry Dipoto, the Angels general manager, basically said, “Sure, we did him wrong because them’s the rules.” That is, if you have a beef, go look at the basic agreement between owners and players, and the basic agreement rewards longevity, and tends to pay you more than you are worth at the back end of your career — if it lasts long enough. (See: Pujols.)

Still, they could have done better. The Cardinals did, a decade ago, when Pujols was entering his second season after killing it in his first. The Cardinals took him from $200,000 to $600,000, tripling his salary — when they did not have to.

The Angels should have followed that example, at least, and given Trout a significant raise. A nice round $1 million would have been nice, and would hardly create a stir in their salary structure. And it would have been only doubling the salary of their best player.

It would not be what he is worth, but it might have left him with a more favorable opinion of the team. But the Angels presumably figure he won’t remember this when they get around to paying him big money — a couple of years down the line.

So where does that leave me? Wishing the Angels had paid him more; understanding why they did not; hoping, for the sake of all those fans who trek to Anaheim to see Mike Trout play that it does not poison his relationship with his team barely one season into his career.