Gardy managing a collection of spare parts (and doing it pretty well)

The question for some of us when the Twins started playing was how long the 2014 season would hold our interest began to treat them as a secondary topic in our summer. This was about the time it started happening last year, when the Twins won half of its first 30 games and then went into a tumble for the rest of the season.

That could very well happen after these first 42 games of 2014.

But I'm finding these Twins to be intriguing – from the front office through the bottom of the roster. That doesn't mean it's all been good, but it has been interesting enough to bear watching and reacting to what's going on.

Let's talk about Ron Gardenhire.

First of all, I'm done bashing the Jason Bartlett thing. It's the winner of the Bonehead Move of 2014 competition (with the horrible front-office management during the Cleveland series two weeks back a close second). The Bartlett fiasco resolved itself quickly and without causing even more embarrassment. We've acknowledged it, made fun of it, laughed about it, cried about it – and it's time to move on. Right now, I'm more inclined to give Gardy praise for the way he's handled a roster that has very, very few reliable parts.

Here's the deal: No matter how good, every team has a few players whose best performance comes when you limit their playing time – a guy who is valuable when he gets 200 plate appearances becomes a liability when you try to use him all the time. (For a historical lesson, see Punto, Nicholas Paul.) What's interesting about these Twins is that, among the position players, a majority of them on the roster are players who fall into that category.

In fact, my list of players who need that sort of management is more than twice as long as the list of players who don't.

Every other position player on the roster isn't, right now, a player who want to see get 500 to 600 plate appearances – and Gardy has so far done a pretty good job of making lemonade from the ingredients he's been given. Compare that to 2010 (the season before the stinking started) when the lineup was pretty much a lock, load and repeat affair – especially during the second half of the season.

Trying to figure out, for example, whether this is a day when the lineup can handle a faux outfielder or two (Nunez in left, Santana in center and/or Colabello in right) … or whether this is a left-handed pitcher that Kubel or Parmelee can handle … or measuring how much he can get out of Pinto in his first full year … or how long he can roll with Escobar at shortstop. These are daily questions to which the answers will be a moving target. You can sometimes bat Suzuki fourth right now, but can you keep him fresh enough to handle that role late in the season if you need him?

The puzzles will only continue when Josh Willingham and Oswaldo Arcia make their returns. Will Gardy do what I hope he does and bat Willingham sixth or seventh until he shows he can handle more? How much will Arcia play and whose playing time will suffer for it? Would Gardy chance that Chris Parmelee is a better bench option that Jason Kubel when the roster is healthier and part with the veteran when moves have to be made? Should he?

Does Danny Santana become your starting shortstop/back-up center fielder when Eduardo Escobar starts to fade? Is Chris Colabello really a major leaguer or will he remembered mostly for his April of excellence? That's a painful question because of how much we're predisposed to like the story of his ascent to Minnesota. But still it has to be asked.

Do the Twins have the strength to admit that their deal with Mike Pelfrey was a mistake and relegate him to long-reliever status or try him in a set-up role when whatever tweak he suffered a couple of weeks back becomes untweaked? How long is

Here's the deal: If Gardy can somehow manage this collection to a .500 finish, he becomes a Manager of the Year candidate – not a winner but an "also receiving votes" candidate -- based on where people thought this team was going when the season started. Don't ask me to bet on .500 right now, because I'm not taking that action. But the wheels are still turning and the vehicle hasn't gotten stuck in the mud.

I'm calling that a victory while fully aware that 2013's OK start (18-17 through 35 games) was followed by a 10-game losing streak that turned the season into a waste of our time. I will bet against things falling apart as completely as they did last year. How many of us noticed that white-hot Detroit is 15-4 in its past 19 games, with three of those losses coming in its five games against the Twins?