Late night: Twins 3, Mariners 2 (13 innings)

Chris Colabello launches his two-run homer in the
top of the 13th inning Friday night.

Box score here.

Game story here.

A couple of good games from a couple of guys who really needed something to go right for them.

Minor league slugger Chris Colabello -- a mere 5-for-37 in his brief major league career, all singles, entering the game -- hammered a two-run homer in the top of the 13th for the decisive runs.

And Scott Diamond, who came into the game with a 5.53 ERA, gave the Twins six innings of one-run ball. Ron Gardenhire had indicated in a radio interview earlier in the day that Diamond was running out of chances, but the lefty kept the Twins in the game.

Still, it's not difficult to spot the flaws in Diamond's outing. He faced 27 hitters and threw a first-pitch strike to exactly a third of them. He threw 57 strikes and 44 balls, not exactly a prime ratio. And he had just one strikeout in his six innings.

The big picture results were good for Diamond. The process, however, was not.

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Much of the pregame chatter on the Interwebs was about the Twins announcement that Joe Mauer, whose paternity leave expires today, would not report to the Twins in Seattle this weekend but will rejoin the squad on Tuesday when they start a home series against Kansas City.

I don't have a problem with this. Yes, the Twins are a better team with Mauer playing. But no one game, or two games, is going to make or break their season. They're obviously not making the playoffs. The Mauer twins were born about five weeks premature, and if it's worth it to him to forfeit a quarter of a million dollars in salary (pro-rated, his salary is a bit more than $125,000 a day) to spend today and Sunday with his wife and daughters, who am I to argue?

His absence gives Chris Herrmann a couple more days to get at-bats. I don't regard that as a terrible thing in the long haul.