OK, so Derek Jeter is sidelined again.
So are Mark Teixeira, Curtis Granderson and, of course, Alex Rodriguez.
Friday night, none of that mattered, because the Twins were in town.
The Yankees continued their dominance — and unlikely overall success — with a 2-0 win over Minnesota at a wet, chilly Yankee Stadium.
Hiroki Kuroda (8-6) threw five scoreless innings — the last of those after a 73-minute rain delay — to earn just his second victory in his last 10 starts.
Preston Claiborne finally relieved Kuroda to start the sixth. After Boone Logan got out of a precarious seventh, David Robertson and Mariano Rivera finished the game, with Rivera earning his 30th save.
The undermanned lineup once again scraped together enough runs for the Yankees to win their third straight game.
Manager Joe Girardi said he was impressed at how the pitching staff was able to throw a shutout despite the sloppy mound.
“Those can’t be the easiest conditions to pitch in,” the manager said.
Particularly for Kuroda, who got up and threw pitches several times during the delay and was able to convince Girardi and pitching coach Larry Rothschild he could remain in the game.
“With all the preparation I made, I wanted to come back out there,” Kuroda said through an interpreter. “I think I gave Larry a hard time.”
Kuroda said jokingly Rothschild told him twice during the delay he was done, but Girardi stuck with him.
“He talked about how he had done it a number of times and he was capable of doing it,” Girardi said. “There were concerns we would even be able get through the fifth inning, with weather coming again. … He did a good job when he came back.”
Despite Kuroda’s performance, the Yankees still found themselves in trouble when Logan entered the game with two on and no one out in the seventh.
The lefty promptly struck out Chris Parmelee for the first out. He then uncorked a wild pitch while facing Joe Mauer, but with the potential tying run in scoring position, he recovered to strike out Mauer and then did the same to Justin Morneau — who flipped his bat and threw his helmet in anger at the swinging strike call — to end the threat.
In the end, it was just another night for the Yankees — who swept a four-game series in Minnesota earlier this month — against the Twins.
It was one of Jeter’s many replacements this season, Luis Cruz, who started the Yankees’ fifth-inning rally.
Cruz, who was playing third base last night, singled to lead off the inning and was bunted over to second by Chris Stewart. Cruz scored when Brett Gardner singled through the hole on the left side. Gardner advanced to second on the throw home, which helped allow him to score the Yankees’ second run on Robinson Cano’s two-out single to center.
Much of the early part of the game was played through a light rain that grew steadier until the game was delayed with one out in the bottom of the fourth.
Kuroda had pitched fairly well over those previous 10 somewhat hard-luck starts. Still, he had just one win to show for his efforts, because the Yankees offense scored more than three runs just twice during that stretch.
The bats didn’t do much better last night, but the Twins were worse, going 0-for-12 with runners in scoring position.
The closest the Twins came to scoring came in the seventh, when a Logan pitch got by Stewart, but the ball bounced back toward the plate so quickly that Pedro Florimon was unable to score from third.
“We got lucky,” Girardi said.
He hasn’t been able to say that too often this season.
dan.martin@nypost.com