"I felt it tonight in the seventh," Elarton said Saturday night. "I knew it was a big inning for me. I had to step off the mound and ask myself, 'What are you doing?'"

What he was doing was trying to push the Tribe 1 1/2 games ahead of the Yankees in the Wild Card race. All Elarton and the Indians needed to do was win.

And they did.

Behind another solid outing from Elarton (9-7, 4.73 ERA) and timely hitting from almost everybody in their lineup, the Indians all but buried any hopes the defending AL Central champion Twins might have harbored of returning to the playoffs with a 7-5 victory in front of 32,123 at Jacobs Field.

In a game that featured tight play early, the Indians saw the playoff-seasoned Twins stumble as the game wore on. Part of the problem for the Twins was Elarton himself, who held them to six hits and two runs over eight innings.

"Scotty was strong throughout tonight," manager Eric Wedge said. "He really leveraged his fastball, and he was dropping his breaking ball in there. He used his changeup effectively.

"He really did a great job for us tonight."

Good thing Elarton did, too. For in the first part of the game, he wasn't any better or sharper than Twins rookie Scott Baker.

"I'll tell you, that Baker's impressive," Wedge said. "He's got good stuff, a live fastball. ... It took us a while to see him. Actually, it looked like the second time around, but they did a good job of being pretty consistent with their at-bats."

The consistency Wedge spoke of showed itself vividly in the sixth, an inning that saw the Tribe break a 2-2 tie and knock Baker from the ballgame.

What jumpstarted that inning was the patience the Indians showed against Baker (1-2, 2.93 ERA). They worked him for a pair of walks with one out, and Casey Blake's single to center loaded the bases and finished Baker's night.

Left-hander J.C. Romero came on and struck out Grady Sizemore. Coco Crisp followed with an infield single that scored a pair of runs, the second of which came home on Juan Castro's throwing error.

That bit of offense seemed to sap what energy might have been left in the fading Twins. They were up against a team hungry to beat them and put an end to their pennant hopes.

Maybe the latter wasn't possible with 20-plus games left. Maybe the Twins still do have hopes -- flickering, at best. But the Tribe made the Twins look like a team with no meaningful games left to play as September winds toward October. The Twins made the Tribe look like a confident team poised to go somewhere after the season.

"[We've] grown as a team," Wedge said. "I think the confidence level has been pretty consistent in terms of how they've gained and just continued to build on that the last couple of years, but also this year.

"It's a long season, but you've gotta like the way [we're] playing right now."