MINNEAPOLIS — Elsewhere, in Tampa and in St. Louis and in Washington, D.C., baseball teams had opportunities to take care of business Monday and did not. The Astros got thwacked by the Rays. The Dodgers got smacked by Max Scherzer and whacked by Ryan Zimmerman. The Braves couldn’t get the final four outs they needed against the Cardinals.

Those series go on.

This one ends as it had to end, with the Yankees all but forcing the Twins to tap out, overwhelming them for a third straight game even if the final score, 5-1, tries to let you think the Twins had a shot Monday night. They did not. Gleyber Torres hit an early home run. Cameron Maybin hit one late. Luis Severino made a bunch of gutty pitches. A gaggle of Yankees relievers came in, punched the clock, worked their shift, moved on.

And so the Yankees move on, too. Everyone else has work left to do. The Yankees get the rest of the week off. They get to see if Houston can flick away the pesky Rays on Tuesday night, filling out their side of the playoff bracket. They get to see if the Dodgers, who always seem to have answers for any crisis, have one more in their arsenal in a win-or-go-home game Wednesday night in Los Angeles against the Nats.

“The way we played tonight was championship-caliber baseball,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said when it was done. “The amount of big-time plays we made on defense, the amount of pitches we made in big spots … those guys played well, but our guys, time and time again, foiled them with a big-time play. We wanted to finish this and get home.”

This was one of the tricks of the Yankees’ success during their dynasty days of the ’90s. If they had a chance to close you out, they closed you out as soon as possible. The first three times they won the World Series under Joe Torre — 1996, 1998, 1999 — they never faced a do-or-die game. Every time, nine out of nine, they finished the job as soon as the job could be finished. Every single time.

It was a useful skill, and remains one. The Yankees won’t play Game 1 of the American League Championship Series until Saturday night, either in Houston or The Bronx. They can craft their starting rotation exactly as they please. Every one of the bullpen arms will get four full days of rest.

Meanwhile? In Tampa, the Astros will use Justin Verlander — on short rest, no less — to try and close that series on Tuesday, so Verlander is out of play for Game 1 of the ALCS no matter what. In LA, the Dodgers face a real risk of elimination, needing to figure out how to beat Stephen Strasburg.

It makes for good theater, watching those series go as deep as possible. But the Yankees are about good business, not good theater. They are in the market for 11 postseason victories. They get three quickies against the Twins, and now they get to go home, relax, chill, wait for the rest of baseball to catch up to them.

That’s good business.

Target Field was loud Monday night, Minnesota baseball fans refusing to believe the 101 wins they’d witnessed during the regular season could be so easily sent through a wood chipper. So 41,121 roared with hope the first three innings when the Twins got a total of six base runners on against Severino.

In the second it was bases loaded, nobody out. The Yankees had jumped to a 1-0 lead on Torres’ home run, but the Twins seemed poised to pounce. Severino looked shaken. A year ago, the Red Sox had all but stolen his lunch money in a 16-1 rout in the ALDS. Severino looked primed to be pulverized again.

Except Miguel Sano popped up, a mile high. Marwin Gonzalez struck out swinging. And Jake Cave stared at Severino’s best slider of the night, shaking his head as he walked away from home plate, the crowd suddenly muted, understanding that they could get as loud as they wanted to get, it wasn’t going to make a bit of difference.

The Yankees had business to tend to. And it would be tended to.

“We were outplayed for three games,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli conceded. “In a best-of-five series it can end very quickly. And it did.”

Outplayed, outmaneuvered, outmanned. So the Yankees go home, take a few days off, ease back into October. The others? Maybe the Astros get it done Tuesday night at the Trop, maybe they’re forced to wait until Thursday in Houston where they’ll play for the whole season. The Dodgers will roll the dice, hope they can cue up Randy Newman crooning about another perfect day in LA by the end of it.

The Yankees will sit at home, kick back, and root for extra innings in every game between now and Game 1 of the ALCS. Their work here is done.