Mike Trout hit .326 last season with 30 home runs and 49 stolen bases. (Getty Images)

Far be it from me to take up for The Man here, but it's not Arte Moreno's job to make Mike Trout feel appreciated, and it's not Mike Scioscia's job to run his baseball team around Mike Trout.

And nobody gets that better than Mike Trout, probably.

Personally, I'd probably have flipped Trout another hundred grand or so, you know, a little something for the effort.

Moreno felt otherwise. His general manager, Jerry Dipoto, said something about managing economics. Presumably the Los Angeles Angels are protecting themselves against the next 20-year-old to wander in and post one of the greatest seasons ever. The lowest-rated farm system in the game would seemingly protect them against this becoming a habit. But, you never know.

The Los Angeles Angels have their policies, so Trout gets his 6.25 percent raise to $510,000.

[Related: Angels raise Mike Trout's salary to fraction above league minimum]

As for moving Trout to left field, it's not an unreasonable decision by

Matt Kemp was limited to 106 games last season because of injuries. (AP)

GLENDALE, Ariz. – Fifty-fifty? Matt Kemp says he was kidding.

That's too bad.

For one, no he wasn't. For another, his quest for 50 homers and 50 steals was a rare, antagonistic and cool swipe at the baseball spirits, who did indeed take out Kemp at the knee, the hamstring and the shoulder. Them and the wall at Coors Field. You set out for 50-50. They send you and the ball into a fence together, see who walks away.

"That was a joke!" he insisted recently of the 50-50 talk.

Nope. Not buying it.

In fact, I'd bet he's after it again. Only, saying stuff like that aloud tends to summon the baseball beat-down gods and, sure enough, they took Kemp apart last season, piece by piece.

[Related: Carl Crawford might not be ready for opening day]

Fifty homers, huh? That'll cost you a shoulder.

Fifty steals? We'll take that hammy.

Still playing? Need that knee, pal?

"I'm not making no predictions," he said.

Any other ideas?

Kemp hit .303 with 23 home runs and 69 RBI last season. (USA Today Sports)"Not like I said 60-60," he grumbled.

Oh boy.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Some very fine men have managed the Colorado Rockies. Many of them did not, for one reason or another, resign.

Walt Weiss was given a one-year contract to manage the Rockies. (AP)More than half, in fact, stuck it out long enough to leave the way managers in most organizations leave – rumors of front-office displeasure, followed by unkind homemade bleacher signs, followed by front-office exasperation with rumors and signs, followed by front-office no-comments, followed by a news conference heavily attended by the front office but usually not the manager.

It's not like managing the Rockies is always an impossible job. They did almost win the NL West a couple times. The 2007 season was cool. There have been rainouts.

Certainly, the job is unlike any other. The games are different up there, and so must be the man who runs them, surfs them, survives them and recovers from them. Sometimes, the Rockies win. Sometimes, it's simply a race to the bottom of the Pepto-Bismol bottle. The game leans to incendiary.

Now, just months since

TEMPE, Ariz. – Five months since his last ballgame, Mike Trout on Monday morning sat hunched over a chicken sandwich, a minor obstacle he'd wolf down in about four bites. The bus was leaving for Peoria, his stuff was scattered in front of his locker, he wasn't in uniform, coaches were walking toward the door, like suddenly the day was running off in double-time.

A teammate walked by, tapped Trout on the shoulder. 

Mike Trout jokes with Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton during a photo shoot. (AP)He looked up and grinned.

"Nervous, man," Trout said.

He wasn't really.

It was game day – the Los Angeles Angels' third, his first – and it was time to go. Trout nodded at a clock. The bus was waiting. The Seattle Mariners were waiting.

"What?!" the teammate shouted in mock astonishment. "They don't send The Beatles on the road! Wear a wig, man."

Trout took the ribbing with a smile and a nod, flipped what was left of the chicken sandwich in the trash, half-jogged to his locker and slid his road grays from their hanger.

"Finally," Trout said. "Been a

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – It's about over for Todd Helton, at 37. 

"Thirty-nine," he corrected. Todd Helton looks on during a spring training workout. (AP)

Right, 39. 

"Thanks for the benefit of the doubt."

Of course.

Early Sunday morning, before many of the young men who are the future of the Colorado Rockies would arrive at Salt River Fields, Helton poured a cup of coffee, fell into a chair, patted the one beside him.

"What's up?" he said.

He arrived 18 years ago, the quarterback-turned-franchise-first-baseman, in a draft of Darin Erstad, Kerry Wood, Roy Halladay and Carlos Beltran. The Colorado Rockies were a couple years old. He was a big-leaguer by the summer of '97, second to Wood as Rookie of the Year in '98, a 35-homer guy in '99, a batting champion in '00, filthy rich by '01. 

Now, nearing his 17th season, more than 2,400 hits in, 354 homers in, back and hip ailments having stolen a couple hundred games and countless at-bats, Helton looks and acts and talks like a man who's probably had enough. The greatest Rockie, Helton has

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – This would be so odd if Josh Booty's prime hadn't already followed the same impulsive path traced by the pitch that could bring him back. If, at 37, he hadn't already soared and wobbled and dipped and dived in not one sport, but two.

Josh Booty had 26 career at-bats with the Marlins from 1996-98. (Getty Images)Hell, what's life strapped to a knuckleball when you're the fifth pick in the entire baseball draft at 19, only to retire at 23 after having hit .198 in the minor leagues? What's a life of fingertip randomness when you've been drafted to be an NFL quarterback and retired never having thrown an NFL pass?

At least the knuckleball, cranky old soul it may be, starts in your hand before running off on its own plan. At least somebody usually, eventually, throws it back.

These years later, Booty seems to have one regret, and that is that he left baseball too early, or returned to football too late, that he'd been caught in the middle of two loves and, perhaps, appropriately honored neither. Not that he didn't try hard to be great at

PHOENIX – Among the four, one got engaged, one got married, two gave up their side jobs as shoe salesmen, one fought a hellacious marlin in Cabo, one put on eight pounds using a food delivery service, one put on at least eight pounds with no good explanation and two, on Thursday morning, switched off on a single pen while signing their Major League Uniform Players Contracts on a clubhouse table usually meant for card playing or breakfast.

Speaking of half of them, their manager said, "If they came over and introduced themselves, I wouldn't have known who they were last [spring]."

Jarrod Parker won 13 regular-season games for the AL West champion A's last season. (Getty Images)

The other two did briefly introduce themselves last spring.

Those four – pitchers Jarrod Parker, Tommy Milone, Dan Straily and A.J. Griffin – left the season of their young lives with something like satisfaction and returned for the next season with stories to tell, and on this Thursday morning mixed quietly and easily in the Oakland A's clubhouse. A year ago, two (Parker and Milone) were here and

Alfonso Soriano needs 28 home runs to reach 400 for his career. (USA Today Sports)

MESA, Ariz. – After a week of sun, warmth and unfiltered spring promise, Wednesday morning here broke dank and gloomy. Rather than creep toward something like renewal, the season had withdrawn into a condition of icy mush, with no explanation other than, well, wait, there it is, through the windshield wipers on the road ahead, "Winter Home of the Chicago Cubs."

The poor Cubs, 101-game losers, 100-and-something-year losers, couriers of wind, rain, cold and the slog of another rebuild.

Keeps going like this, Dale Sveum will go hunting with Robin Yount again next winter, this time wearing a full quail suit.

Actually, it's maybe not that bad. Probably.

We're pretty sure the Cubs are front-office smart, have the money to match the organizational plan, believe in the plan and one day will have the major league players around whom the plan presumably is … planned. Until then, they'll have stuff like 2012 happen, where they spent $108 million for 101 losses, traded away Ryan