With just two weeks remaining before the 2015 MLB All-Star game, the Houston Astros find themselves in a surprising spot: first place in the American League West.

Entering the season, not much was expected of this Houston club. The team had lost at least 90 games each of the past four seasons and hadn’t been above .500 since 2008. Stemming from the multiple high draft picks, there was talent in place, but it was all very young and inexperienced, and the top guys were supposed to be years away from their prime. Many scouts, analysts, etc. put 2017 or 2018 as the barometer for the Astros success; they needed to be a playoff-caliber club by then to explain away all this losing.

Well, on their way to competing three years down the road, something funny happened. The players decided they didn’t want to wait that long.

On the first day of July, Houston is 46-34 and has the most wins in the AL. It is a full four games ahead of the rest of the West division, one that includes the supposed title-contending Los Angeles Angels and Seattle Mariners. But the disappointing seasons from both the Angels and Mariners don’t explain Houston’s success. The Astros have just been plain good.

The Houston offense has really been something special, scoring 356 runs thus far, fourth-most in the AL. It isn’t impossible to explain the output, after all, these guys were supposed to be good eventually. It’s just that everything is happening ahead of schedule.

Shortstop Carlos Correa, the first pick of the 2012 draft, was supposed to develop into a special talent. Instead of developing though, the 20-year-old Puerto Rican has entered the majors like he’s played there his whole life. Correa has 27 hits in his first 21 career MLB games; 14 of those for extra bases. With five home runs and four steals in just 90 at-bats, it looks like there may not be anything Correa can’t do.

And he’s not alone. George Springer also belongs. Springer was the team’s top pick in 2011 and is turning into a star in his first full season. He has 12 home runs, 13 steals, 41 walks and an .807 OPS having just passed 300 plate appearances on the year. Among all hitters in baseball, exactly one other man has reached double-digit home runs and steals with at least 40 walks and an OPS above .800: Paul Goldschmidt. The two stand alone.

There are others on Houston having remarkable years at the dish as well. Jose Altuve is primed to be named an All-Star for the second straight season. Jed Lowrie was absolutely on fire at the plate earlier in the year, before succumbing to an injury (and subsequently being replaced by Correa. It remains to be seen what Houston will do with the lineup once Lowrie returns next month). Evan Gattis is mashing even while he struggles to get on base. Luis Valbuena seemingly hits every pitch he connects with out of the ballpark. Valbuena has 19 home runs (third in the league) but just a .199 batting average.

All this and more reinforcements are on the way. Prospect Jon Singleton was just called back up to the bigs recently and has the potential to positively influence a lineup. Chris Carter is wallowing around .200 at the plate, but he did the same thing last year before exploding the second half of the season. It all adds up to there being little reason to doubt that this team’s production is for real, at least on offense.

The pitching staff as a whole hasn’t been quite as impressive. Sure, Dallas Keuchel has matured into a bona fide ace starting pitcher who may vie for the Cy Young Award this very season, but no one else has pitched consistently well for long stretches. Lance McCullers, another rookie and former first-round pick, has been excellent early on but only has nine career starts in the majors up to this point. As a team, Houston is fourth in the AL in ERA, but that figure drops to seventh when removing bullpen production. The Astros starters have been decent; the bullpen has been stellar.

Houston’s reliever ERA and batting-average-against rank second and first in the league respectively. With 67 total walks allowed, the Astros bullpen is the only one in the AL that has given up fewer than 70 free passes. Closer Luke Gregerson grabs the headlines, but middle relievers Will Harris, Josh Fields and others have been pulling the largest weight.

At the beginning of the season, this all seemed so phantasmagorical. Surely the success of the Houston Astros would not continue for long. But here we are, three months into the year, and the team is still playing up to those same levels.

Scariest of all for opponents is there is no clear sign that the winning will end anytime soon. Houston even has the option of adding another starting pitcher prior to the July 31 trade deadline. If it does that, the weakest unit on this club, which is still pretty respectable by the way, would improve drastically. The team may well end up as one of the best in baseball in 2017 or 2018. It just so happens that it is already on its way there in 2015.