HOUSTON — It is bleak to be mentioned in the same breath as the 2012 or 2013 Houston Astros. Both clubs were built to fail, even with Jose Altuve anchoring their lineup. The teams combined to lose 218 games and became an entire league’s laughingstock, tanking in a manner that the collective bargaining agreement now tries to prohibit.Out of that calamity came a golden era that rendered that futility a footnote. Any mention of those two miserable seasons is now reserved for moments of levity — or the occasional reminder that things can always get worse.Why the AL Wild Card is up for grabsKen Rosenthal and Johnny SweetThings can’t get much worse for this Astros outfield, so it feels pertinent to put their pitiful start in perspective. Doing so forces a discussion of those two dreadful teams, which deployed outfields featuring the likes of Jordan Schafer, Brian Bogusevic, Justin Maxwell, L.J. Hoes and Brandon Barnes.Those outfields in 2012 and 2013 are the only two in franchise history to finish a season with an OPS lower than .660 and an on-base percentage lower than .300. Houston’s 2026 outfield is on pace to join them. The group entered Sunday slashing .222/.297/.362 across the season’s first 78 games.Its .659 OPS is unsightly, but somehow, two major-league outfields still have a lower one. Four have a lower on-base percentage than the Astros’ .297 clip. It is perhaps the only solace one can take from a position group that is hamstringing everything the Astros are trying to accomplish.Improving it will be general manager Dana Brown’s foremost goal before the Aug. 3 trade deadline. His attempt to do so this offseason has not aged well, a fact this week’s three-game series against the Toronto Blue Jays should accentuate.Houston is scheduled to start three right-handed pitchers against the Blue Jays. Somewhere in the middle of Toronto’s order will sit Jesús Sánchez, who sports an .830 OPS in 195 plate appearances against righties this season.In March, Brown traded Sánchez to the Blue Jays for Joey Loperfido. After he did, Brown declared — without prompt — that the Astros were “not done yet” in their search for outfield help.Brown could not back up the braggadocio. Failing to finalize another deal left Houston reliant on a bevy of outfielders who are either inexperienced, in need of more development or defense-first players. One of them, Brice Matthews, is a converted infielder. The results have been atrocious.“Trying to match these guys up against pitchers I know they can handle and locate pitches where I know those guys can be successful,” manager Joe Espada said on Sunday. “Once they get going, (I’m) trying to give them an extra couple games in a row, trying to get them going that way. I want all of them to play.“It’s difficult. But it’s the roster that we have.”Espada has deployed nine different left fielders and six different center fielders during his search for stability. Cam Smith has started 72 of the season’s first 79 games in right field, but boasts a .219 batting average. Of the 16 major-league right fielders who’ve tallied at least 200 plate appearances, only three of them have a lower OPS than Smith’s .654 mark.Smith is one of five Astros who have made at least 75 plate appearances as an outfielder this season. His seven home runs equal the total of the other four. Houston’s entire outfield has produced 23 home runs. Yordan Alvarez, who has started just 12 games in left field, is responsible for four of them.Amid the absence of power or production from the outfield, Alvarez remains the Astros’ primary designated hitter. Logic may suggest softening the stance to spark the outfield production — or to free the designated hitter spot for other players — but maintaining Alvarez’s health is of foremost concern.“There’s always a possibility of me playing more out there,” Alvarez said on Sunday through an interpreter. “There’s no limitations for me being out there in the outfield, but we have a couple young players out there that can play the outfield really well. Also, the manager said he’s trying to get me more at-bats in the lineup as a DH.”Espada insisted throughout the winter that this would be the case, furthering the confusion about how Houston handled its outfield this offseason. Players deserve some blame — Brown can’t swing a bat for them — but it’s clear he and his baseball operations team may have either underestimated the development these players still needed or overvalued their potential.It is a problem Sánchez or someone of his ilk would help to solve. The fault is not in trading Sánchez, whose miserable two months in Houston after last August’s trade deadline were marred by defensive lapses, a 25 percent strikeout rate and an inability to handle the pressure of a playoff pursuit.For a front office forced to remain mindful of the luxury tax, dealing Sánchez and his $6.8 million salary made sense. Failing to allocate some of that money elsewhere — or find a more established replacement for Sánchez’s potential production — did not.Sánchez isn’t a perfect player, but the next major-league game he plays will be the 650th of his career. Of the five Astros who’ve taken at least 75 plate appearances in the outfield this season, four of them have played fewer than 212 career games. The other is Jake Meyers, who has a career OPS+ of 88. League average is 100.Sánchez’s career OPS+ is 99, but in his current state, he would not be the Astros’ savior. According to Baseball-Reference, he’s been worth minus-0.3 wins above replacement across his first 223 plate appearances this season. FanGraphs rates him somewhat more favorably, but still at just 0.1 WAR after 69 games.Before the trade, Loperfido had a 92 OPS+ in 122 career major-league games. That the team optioned him earlier this month in favor of another left-handed hitting outfielder — veteran LaMonte Wade Jr. — offered a damning indictment of Loperfido’s standing within a shaky outfield hierarchy.Wade has played in 564 games across parts of eight major-league seasons. He is nearing a rehab assignment after sustaining a hamstring injury earlier this month. Upon his return, Wade could offer a semblance of stability.Little else of it exists, leaving Brown to dwell on his words from March. Houston had extensive conversations then with the Boston Red Sox about their surplus of outfielders, according to multiple sources briefed on the team’s plans but not authorized to speak publicly.It stands to reason that those talks — and many others — will reignite for a team that should not be “done yet.”