Hockey and other stuff has cut into some of my baseball watching, but I'm among those trying to figure out what what we'll be seeing as the Twins' season continues to unfold. After that first road trip, the 1-5 disaster in which almost everything went wrong or was done poorly, you had reason to wonder how quickly the season was going to dissolve into chaos. After the last dozen games, in which the Twins went 7-5, you could piece together an argument or two for hope.

The numbers are too fluid to mean much for now. in Sunday's victory at Seattle, Joe Mauer increased his OPS by 90 points with a triple, double and single, and moved his slugging percentage from Puntonian depths to something more respectable. Phil Hughes has lost his first four starts while putting up statistics better than his first four from 2014, from which he rebounded to become the staff ace. (There's legitimate concern about Hughes never putting together consecutive good seasons as a starting pitcher.)

I was squeamish about a couple of things Paul Molitor did in his first week of managing. Since then, however, I have been impressed by the juggling he has done to make as much as possible of what he has on the roster. On many days, that has meant starting a couple of players who would be reserves on a higher quality team and youngsters (Kennys Vargas, Danny Santana and Oswaldo Arcia) who are, for the moment, flailing and failing.

How badly are they flailing right now? Add up their OPS+ numbers and the three of them combined are at 113 -- three below Mauer's Sunday-enhanced 116.

When Ron Gardenhire's managing was more black-and-white, Molitor's palate feels more subtle. I will still cringe when Blaine Boyer and Tim Stauffer walk in from the bullpen, but most pitching staffs have a couple of liabilities. The starting pitchers are the ones who can make those relievers less relevant by pitching the way Hughes did on Friday and Kyle Gibson did on Sunday.

And, yes, I'm happy for Mike Pelfrey. He was excellent against Kansas City and, in his previous start, stayed out of enough trouble that the Twins were able to win a game that the Cy Young winner, Cory Kluber, started for Cleveland. I liked the way Molitor and Neil Allen handled him in those (very different) starts, and he doesn't deserve an automatic demotion when Ricky Nolasco returns. If anything, Nolasco is No. 6 on the list of starters right now, pending what plays out with Trevor May's line drive-smoked elbow.

Molitor has also survived so far the subpar play of the starting outfield (Arcia, Jordan Schafer and Torii Hunter), which was predictable, and Brian Dozier's slow start, which wasn't. I am guessing that it makes Molitor almost as nervous as the rest of us to put one of the Eduardos in left field, but that's a better call than putting Shane Robinson and Schafer in the lineup together. The question for Molitor could become whether Robinson, who has been better than expected, gets more of Schafer's playing time. (The bigger question for the organization, of course, is how quickly can it get Byron Buxton Twins ready.)

An 8-10 record through the season's first three weeks is better than what I expected after that first week. I stand by my earlier position that the Twins have very little margin for error on most days. It's not a team that can bull its way through defensive mistakes and bad pitching with its offense.

But it's a more interesting team than I had imagined and I'm curious to see how Molitor handles things as the season grinds on.