Manipulating text with a PowerShell script

I've got a ulility that gives me text output that I read into an array of strings.  The 4th word in each string is the name of the vm I need to do other operations on.  How can I perform operations on that name?

Currently, I output a csv header row, change all the spaces to commas ($a = $a -replace "\s+",","), then append the string array to the file, creating a csv.

Then I read the csv back into PowerShell using Import-Csv and manipulate the .Name object.

Is there an easier way of getting this done?

Thanks