Cabrera’s Numbers Add Up

Forget that the Angels’ chances of making the playoffs are infinitesimal, even after Wednesday night’s 3-0 victory over the Kansas City Royals in Kauffman Stadium. Orlando Cabrera has a sure-fire formula for the Angels to win the American League West.

“If we win every single game for the rest of the season, we’re in the playoffs,” said the Angels shortstop, who drove in all the runs with a third-inning sacrifice fly and a two-out, two-run double in the ninth. “Do the math.”

Cabrera has a point. The Angels are 6 1/2 games behind Oakland with 10 games left, but seven of those games are against the Athletics, including a three-game series beginning Friday night in McAfee Coliseum.

A Magnificent Seven -- a sweep of this weekend’s series and of a four-game series beginning Sept. 28 in Anaheim -- and the Angels gain seven games on the A’s. Simple, right?

“It’s not going to be easy, because we have to beat them seven times, and if we don’t, we’re done,” Cabrera said. “Every time we go on the field, we have to think like this is the last game we’re going to play.”

The Angels played with that kind of urgency Wednesday, thwarting the Royals with several superb plays and getting a dominant start from Kelvim Escobar, who had no margin for error and made none, blanking Kansas City for seven innings, giving up four hits and striking out five to improve to 11-13.

Scot Shields threw a scoreless eighth, and closer Francisco Rodriguez, all of a sudden the cardiac kid, got Jeff Keppinger to pop out and struck out Joey Gathright with the bases loaded for his 44th save, the second night in a row he escaped a bases-loaded jam.

“The story tonight was the way our guys shut them down,” Manager Mike Scioscia said. “We had to earn every inch we got in this series.”

Starting pitching and relief have been strengths this season. It’s the defense that has been shoddy, the Angels committing a league-high 118 errors and giving up a major league-high 80 unearned runs.

But the Angels flashed some serious leather Wednesday. Garret Anderson raced in from left field to make a shoestring catch of Ryan Shealy’s first-inning bloop, third baseman Robb Quinlan dived to his left to stop Mike Sweeney’s sixth-inning one-hop smash, and Cabrera and second baseman Adam Kennedy each made nice backhand plays of grounders with a runner on second in the fifth inning.

Then in the eighth, with the Angels clinging to a 1-0 lead, Emil Brown sent a drive to deep right-center field. Figgins got an excellent jump and raced about 100 feet before making a lunging catch and tumbling onto the warning track.

“That was a terrific catch,” Scioscia said, “one of the best plays he’s made out there all year.”

Figgins said that normally “that ball is gone or off the wall, but it was hit high enough and the wind was blowing in just enough to give me a chance.”

Anderson doubled to lead off the ninth and took third on Jose Molina’s grounder to second, Figgins drew a two-out walk and Cabrera doubled down the line in left against closer Joe Nelson for a 3-0 lead.

Rodriguez survived another rocky ninth, following up Tuesday night’s 37-pitch effort with a 26-pitch inning, moving him to within two of Bryan Harvey’s franchise record of 46 saves, set in 1991.

Then it was on to Oakland for the Angels, who will be in must-win situations virtually every day they roll out of bed this weekend.

“We can’t look past a pitch, past an inning -- we have to get on a run,” Scioscia said. “We need to win, and there’s no room for anything but good baseball.”

At least now, the Angels know they will gain ground if they win.

“The A’s haven’t been losing much lately, and we haven’t been able to do much about that because we’re not there,” Shields said. “Hopefully, we can change that this weekend.”

mike.digiovanna@latimes.com