Whitson, Subs Pick Up Slack for Padres : Baseball: With Alomar and Roberts out with the flu, pitcher hits first major league home run while shutting out Chicago, 3-0. Pagliarulo and Cora help him with big defensive plays. : This is for page C12

You would think that the way the Padres have been hitting lately would be making the other teams sick.

You would think, considering that the Padres boosted their team batting average by 34 points Monday and Tuesday alone, that maybe opposing pitchers would start feeling queasy, march into the manager’s office and beg out of the lineup.

But no. Instead, Roberto Alomar and Bip Roberts, the Padres’ leadoff and No. 2 batters, caught a flu bug that had found its way into the team’s clubhouse and were scratched from the lineup less than an hour before the start of Wednesday’s game with the Chicago Cubs.

And you know what the Padres, those crazy quick-change artists, did? Plugged Mike Pagliarulo and Joey Cora into the lineup, then went right out and turned some sharp defense and Ed Whitson’s second consecutive complete game and first career home run into a 3-0 victory over the Cubs.

The Padres’ third victory in a row and the Cubs’ sixth consecutive loss came in front of 20,579 in San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

The Padres were coming off a two-night offensive display in which they scored 26 runs and had 36 hits. Nobody contributed more than the top third of the Padre order--Alomar, Roberts, and Tony Gwynn, which went 15 for 29 (.517) with 13 runs scored in those two games.

But about 30 minutes before game-time, Alomar was slumped in a chair in front of his locker, and Roberts was nowhere to be found. Bruce Hurst, today scheduled starting pitcher, was sitting quietly in his chair, also feeling a bit under the weather.

Meanwhile, Pagliarulo was scrambling toward the elevator, heading for the Padres’ indoor batting cage.

“I didn’t know I was in the lineup,” Pagliarulo mumbled to the elevator operator.

Pagliarulo went zero for two but stood out in the field. On this night, the Padre offense as a whole was fairly quiet.

They scratched for a run in the first, when Joe Carter drove in Cora with a single. And they got two more in the seventh. Whitson led the inning off with the homer to left, the first by a Padre pitcher since Calvin Schiraldi put one out against the Dodgers’ Fernando Valenzuela last Sept. 23. And they got their third run when Gwynn scored on an error.

They got eight hits against three Cub pitchers, including one by Benito Santiago, who increased his hitting streak to 12 games.

So how about a word about the Padre defense?

Magnificent.

The Padres, who have just six errors, fewest in the NL, played their third consecutive error-free game. It’s not quite as impressive as Cub Ryne Sandberg’s streak, but not bad. Sandberg played his 104th consecutive errorless game, extending the league record for second baseman.

The Padres’ perfection in the field Wednesday started with Cora and Pagliarulo.

Cora made a leaping stab of a Sandberg line drive and shoveled the ball to Garry Templeton to double off Mike Bielecki at second to end the sixth inning.

Then, he made the play of the game in the seventh. Dwight Smith sliced a drive into the right-center gap. Gwynn caught up to it at the fence and threw to Cora, the cut-off man. Cora turned and fired an on-the-money throw to Pagliarulo at third to get Smith. The Padres led at the time, 1-0.

“Big play,” Padre Manager Jack McKeon said. “Probably the key play in the game. Joey did a remarkable job on that relay. It was good baseball. I’m not afraid to put him in a game in any position. I can eventually see him being a regular somewhere.”

Said Gwynn: “I bounced the throw, but Joey made a great play by staying back on it.

“I thought the key to the game was Cora and Pags.”

Cub Manager Don Zimmer was unhappy with Smith’s decision to attempt to take third. He said Smith was on his own, that third base coach Chuck Cottier didn’t figure into it.

“Absolutely,” Zimmer said. “On a ball to right-center, you don’t look at the coach. We haven’t done anything right in a week.”

Whitson didn’t do much wrong. It was his second consecutive complete game and his first shutout since July 8, 1989 at Pittsburgh, when he defeated Jeff Robinson, 2-0.

“I’ve learned more in the last three or four years about how to pitch,” Whitson said. “Ever since I got back from New York. I feel good when I go out there, that’s the most important thing.”

He allowed seven hits, but ran into trouble just once. That came in the sixth, when three Cubs managed hits. But that was the inning Cora caught Smith at third.

“The defense was absolutely superb,” Whitson said. “Mike Pagliarulo and Joey Cora . . . you can’t beat those plays.”

Cora had seven assists and three putouts. He was also the only Padre to get two hits. Oh, yeah, he also stole a base.

Pagliarulo had four assists and two putouts. At the plate, he walked twice.

Pagliarulo made a diving stop of Andre Dawson’s sharp grounder in the second and threw Mark Grace out at second. Two batters later, Luis Salazar arrived at the plate. Pagliarulo picked up his grounder and threw to Cora at second to start a double play.

Two innings later, Pagliarulo speared Grace’s line drive and threw to first, where Smith had started toward second. Double play.

Since he didn’t think he would be in the lineup, Pagliarulo had taken extra fielding before the game.

“My arm felt like a rag,” he said.

It didn’t matter. His defense didn’t suffer.

“(Defense) is as much a part of winning as anything . . . a three-run homer or pitching a shutout,” he said.

Templeton said the Padre defense has been strong this year because they are aggressive in the field.

“It’s just like being at the plate,” he said. “Guys are staying aggressive on defense. When you’re not as aggressive, you tend to make more errors.”

The Padres turned three double plays, helping Whitson immensely. The most important came in the sixth, when Bielecki was at second and Jerome Walton at first with just one out. The Padres led at the time, 1-0, and Cora’s leap preserved it.

Whitson didn’t hurt himself with his first homer in a game.

“I’ve hit them in batting practice before, so I know what it’s like,” he said. “When I saw it go over, it was clear sailing around the bases.”

Said Zimmer: “We made too many mistakes. First, we get doubled off on two line drives. Then, a guy tries to stretch a double into a triple in a one-run game with nobody out and Grace and Dawson coming up. He’s out by 10 feet.”

He should have called in sick.

Padre Notes

You thought the only thing the Padres lost when pitcher Mark Davis signed with Kansas City was some brilliant relief work. Well, they also lost their best batting practice hitter among pitchers. The Padre pitchers like to hold home run contests, but last year’s were runaways. According to Amos Otis, Padre batting coach, Davis routinely hit three or four homers a day. “Sometimes as many as six,” Otis said. So, with Davis out of the lineup, who leads this year? Well, Andy Benes has two--for the season. Dennis Rasmussen, Calvin Schiraldi and Ed Whitson are close behind with one apiece. Whitson, of course, topped them all with one in Wednesday’s game, his first in the majors. . . . Mike Winters was the third base umpire Wednesday night, replacing Bob Engel. Engel, 56, was given an indefinite leave of absence by the National League after being arrested Saturday in Bakersfield for allegedly stealing 4,180 baseball cards from a retail store. Engel was the home plate umpire for the series opener Tuesday. He is scheduled to be arraigned May 2 on misdemeanor counts of commercial burglary and petty theft. Winters is not a regular NL umpire. He works the Pacific Coast League (triple-A), and one of four umpires under option to the NL. . . . Pitching match-ups for this weekend’s series with Pittsburgh: Eric Show (0-2) vs. Neal Heaton (3-0) Friday, Benes (2-1) vs. Bob Walk (0-3) Saturday, and Rasmussen (1-0) vs. Doug Drabek (3-1) Sunday. . . . The start of Friday’s game has been pushed to 7:35 p.m. to accommodate ESPN.

Minor League Dept.: Three Padre minor league shortstops are in bad shape. Luis Lopez of Riverside (A) suffered a tear of the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee Tuesday. Scott Bream of Charleston (A), last year’s third-round draft pick, will undergo back surgery in May. And Jose Valentin of Wichita (double-A) is out for at least 10 days with a separated left shoulder.