It was around 2007 when everybody started to realize that the Houston Astros were about to embark into a very long, dark period in their history. There were highlights – a breakout by a young Yakety Sax while the TV announcers read off the lineup card. But since Houston was also the first team ever to achieve a 0.0 television rating, society can never be sure if that happened or not. If nobody was watching, how can we ever know if it was watchable at all?

That's a trick question, of course. It was baseball (sort of)! Of course it was watchable. And as we all know, if baseball is worth watching, it's worth analyzing.

The explanation of the 2013 Astros is pretty straightforward: they were terrible at scoring runs and even worse at preventing them, so they lost 111 games. They weren't even spared by any rainouts. But it takes a comparison to wrap your head around the real-life degree of that awfulness.

To put this in perspective, a pop quiz: what are the following four slash stat lines?

A) .240/.299/.375
B) .253/.315/.376
C) .293/.342/.461
D) .272/.347/445

For those of you who are too lazy to click on hyperlinks (and I respect that), here are the answers:

A) The Houston Astros' offensive slash stats
B) Houston Astros collisions in 2013 – foremost among them). He's still just 24, so with two legitimate MLB seasons under his belt, Altuve should stay healthy enough to be a valuable major league regular for a pretty long time. He's also managed to mostly avoid the “scrappy” label so far, a commendable feat for a ballplayer shorter than Tom Cruise.

The other returning positive contributor is catcher www.statcorner.com.

Naturally, Castro is a prime regression candidate, which is scary news for a team that lost 111 games. But he's entering his prime, and he does have an extremely high line drive rate for his career – his 25.2% rate last season was actually down from his ridiculous 27.5% showing from 2012. Even if that gaudy line drive goes down, his BABIP should remain above-average, especially for a player without much foot speed. Either way, Castro isn't the center of a rebuilding movement, but he is firmly a championship-caliber catcher – a solid lefty bat with a decent arm to make up for below average receiving skills. If the knee issues that ended his season early don't recur, Castro should be an above-average player for several years.

For the short term, center field will be manned by Afro Circus that was in the outfield for Houston during most of last season. So he isn't a breakout candidate. Big deal. He's a respectable major league regular in the mold of a sturdier, more emotionally stable Milton Bradley. And who doesn't love Milton Bradley? (Don't answer that question.)

I saved the worst for last. Sorry. the horse that comprehends the universe.

Chris Carter struck out 212 times. "Wow, that's a lot," you think. But people have struck out more. You still have coping mechanisms in place that allow you to move on with your life. But then you realize it was in 506 at bats. You realize that he batted .223 even though his BABIP was .311. You realize that he missed half of the breaking balls he swung at. He missed a third of the fastballs he swung at. His contact rate is most similar to the contact rate of a pitcher batting. He struck out in 36% of his plate appearances against same-handed hurlers... and even more against lefties. Chris Carter is not Rob Deer. He is not Pete Incaviglia or The Hit Tracker. So at age 24, and with a cheap contract, an elite glove, solid home run power, and a decent chance for BABIP improvement (though probably not a full regression to the mean), Dominguez is a guy I'd kind of like to have on my franchise.

At DH, the current projection is The Walrus was a highly touted line-drive hitting prospect back in the day, but he never hit for much power until last year. Unfortunately, Walrus's shiny new .210 isolated power coincided with a Carteresque K-rate spike and the evaporation of his once-lauded patience, and his OBP cratered at .284.

Wallace is basically the definition of a quad-A player at this point after batting .326/.398/.554 in AAA and only managing a .311 wOBA in the majors. He does have potential value as the lion's share of a platoon; lefties ruin him (.143/.200/.250 last year and .212/.264/.306 for his career), but he can handle a bat when he has the platoon advantage (.243/.307/.481 last year and .249/.324/.413 for his career). In Non-Astros-World, that isn't good enough to make him worth a roster spot given his defensive inefficacy. Even in Astros World, he's a little too long in the tooth to be much more than a placeholder.

For what it's worth, I still kinda like him, though my feelings perplex me. An Astro, without doubt.

Apart from having strangely appropriate names for a small-business pimping partnership, Grossman and Hoes are pretty unspectacular major leaguers. They're both 24-year-old tweener outfielders, stretched defensively in center field. They both have some speed but neither is a burner. Grossman's minor league numbers suggest on-base skills he didn't show last year, when he struggled to put the bat on the ball against right-handed pitching and largely invalidated the advantage provided by his switch-hitting. (Is it just me, or does Houston have a lot of switch hitters?).

Hoes is the more athletic of the two, but unless he can fix his bizarre batted ball data – last year he was an extreme ground ball hitter, as bad as Villar – his odds of leveraging that athleticism into corner outfield-type offense are pretty slim. Hoes has fairly neutral platoon splits, so it's not impossible to envision a weird Hoes-against-fly-ballers, Grossman-against-ground-ballers platoon-lite. In this scenario, the Astros could maximize their assets and eke second-division production out of a corner outfield spot, which could give the Houston loyals a nice warm fuzzy feeling as the opposition ranches their favorite baseball team like angry Vikings.

On the Horizon

The reason I talk about platooning Grossman and Hoes is 24 years old and batted .311/.425/.626 at AAA last season, with 37 home runs and 45 steals over two levels. His name is George Springer, and he may be the best player in the Astros organization. I mean that literally. Majors or minors. The strapping Springer is an athletic beast and a very pretty man with a swoon-worthy smile.

Like basically everyone else in this organization, Springer has major contact issues which may suppress his overall numbers. But even if he can't hit .250 yet, he's selective, he'll hit for power and he'll add a lot of value on defense and on the base paths. That's already a more valuable profile than guys like Altuve or Fowler or Castro, and he may immediately take up the mantle of Houston Astros MVP – at least, once the A-Team calls him up in May or June, giving them an extra season of Springer before arbitration.

First baseman Jonathan Singleton, the headliner of the Hunter Pence trade, is waiting in the wings as well, potentially snagging the 1B/DH role from Walrus to start the season. Singleton is the top first-base prospect in baseball, though that isn't saying much, since MLB first basement are usually converted third baseman, catchers, or outfielders.

The highly-touted Singleton disappointed scouts in 2013 by getting nailed with a marijuana suspension, coming back out of shape (munchies?), and struggling at AAA, though he did tee off on A and AA pitching. He could be a big lefty power bat with solid on-base and contact skills for Houston, but the makeup and conditioning concerns have hurt his stock.

The rest of the Astros position prospects have a bit too much refinement ahead of them to contribute in 2014. Shortstop-for-now Carlos Correa is a fabulous prospect, just behind the elite quartet of Chicago's Javier Baez, Minnesota's Byron Buxton, Boston's filthy slider in the 2014 draft. (My favorite part of that .gif: that batter is the DH. Just imagine what would've happened if Rodon threw that pitch to some utility infielder like Jordany Valdespin).

But while the Houston system is good, it's not elite yet. 2014 will be a fun year to monitor some of these up-and-comers, and the team might be sniffing the playofffs by 2016 or 2017. Is it uncouth to tank this hard for this long? Sure. But eventually, it'll work. In the meantime, go 'Stros.