Rasmussen States His Case : Baseball: Padre pitcher lets his arm do the talking in a 3-0 victory over the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field.

There’s no need for Dennis Rasmussen to talk about vengeance. There’s no need for him to mock all of the teams who ignored him in the free-agent market. There’s no need for him to take shots at the Padres for their disinterest.

Instead, Rasmussen has decided to allow his pitching do his talking, and it’s coming through loud and clear.

In one of the finest performances of his career Wednesday, Rasmussen shut out the Chicago Cubs, 3-0, silencing a crowd of 22,500, and making a whole lot of general managers look silly.

The victory was the Padres’ sixth consecutive, their longest winning streak since Aug. 31-Sept. 6, 1989. After putting 10 players on the disabled list, calling 10 players up from triple-A Las Vegas and making 29 roster moves since the start of the season, the Padres (28-25) are only two games behind the division-leading Dodgers.

“It’s incredible, isn’t it,” Padre right fielder Tony Gwynn said. “Here we are with injuries every day, bringing up all kinds of guys from Vegas, and we’re right there in the hunt.”

The Padres, with only two starters from their original rotation, have wreaked havoc in the league with their pitching. They had the worst earned-run average in the National League a week ago, but the Padres suddenly are pitching as if each starter was resurrected as Bob Gibson.

In their six victories, the Padres’ starting rotation has yielded a 0.77 ERA, allowing two or fewer runs in each game. The starters have allowed three runs in their past 39 innings, pitching into the eighth inning in five of the six games.

“It’s been absolutely outstanding,” Padre Manager Greg Riddoch said. “You can’t ask for better pitching performances than we’ve been getting.”

The Padres have been rather surprised at the starting performances of Adam Peterson (2-1, 3.29 ERA) and Jose Melendez (1-0, 1.13 ERA), particularly because they opened the season in Las Vegas and didn’t fit into their plans. But Rasmussen’s return has overwhelmed them.

Rasmussen was on the free-agent market during the winter, but the best offer that came his way was courtesy of the Padres. The negotiations were quite brief. The Padres were offering him a meager $2,500 raise to $805,000. It would be a one-year contract. It would not be guaranteed.

Take it or leave it.

Rasmussen grudgingly accepted. He came to spring training expecting to be the Padres’ fifth starter, instead was told he was only one of several candidates, and then fell out of the running when he developed shoulder tendinitis. He was placed on the disabled list, spent 30 days on a rehabilitative assignment in Las Vegas and returned wondering if the Padres reallly wanted him.

Considering his first three outings, with each one being more impressive than the last, the Padres are wondering whether to hug or kiss him.

Rasmussen opened the season by allowing three hits and one run in seven innings against the Houston Astros, resulting in a 4-2, 10-inning victory. He followed it up by pitching seven shutout innings against the Astros in a 4-0 victory. And for an encore Wednesday, he pitched a shutout, allowing only one baserunner to reach third base.

“To tell you the truth, I wasn’t even thinking about the shutout until the ninth inning,” Rasmussen said. “The game was too close to think about it. But these things (shutouts) don’t come too often for me, so you can be sure I’m going to enjoy it.”

Complete games have been a rarity for Rasmussen, much less shutouts. He entered the game with only three shutouts in his seven-year career, averaging one shutout every 67 starts. In only 19 of those 202 starts did he even have a complete game.

On Wednesday, against the team that leads the league in homers and is second in slugging percentage, Rasmussen made the Cubs look foolish. It was only the second time this season the Cubs had been shut out, and the first time a starter pulled off the feat against the Cubs without the aid of his bullpen.

Rasmussen, whose shutout was the first by a Padre pitcher since Bruce Hurst on Sept. 17, 1990, dominated from start to finish. He retired the first five batters, striking out three, and ended the game allowing only two hits to the final 15 batters he faced.

“We kept fooling them all game,” Padre catcher Benito Santiago said. “They never knew what was coming. He was throwing all his pitches, and had command of every one of them.”

There was only one inning in which Rasmussen allowed more than one baserunner, when he yielded consecutive singles to Hector Villanueva and Jerome Walton in the second. Doug Dascenzo ended the threat by flying out to center, and Rasmussen never had another concern the rest of the day.

“I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m not surprising myself,” Rasmussen said. “There are guys who throw harder than me, and guys who are overpowering, but the bottom line is wins, isn’t it?

“It was frustrating seeing the problems (the Padres) were having when I was on the DL, and now I’m here to help. I’m pitching aggressively. I have command of all my pitches. Everything seems to be working.

“Hopefully, it’ll continue.”

The Padres got all the offense they needed in the first inning when Tony Fernandez hit his second home run of the season off Mike Bielecki into a 19 m.p.h. wind. It was such an unlikely occurrence that when Fernandez returned to the dugout, Padre batting coach Merv Rettenmund was on the ground, faking that he had fainted.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Rettenmund said, laughing, “Not with the way the wind was blowing. We had 10 guys who hit the ball harder, and theirs didn’t go out.”

The Padres added a run in the seventh inning when Santiago, using a bit of acting himself, hit a two-out triple into the right-field corner, scoring Fred McGriff. Santiago was knocked down two pitches earlier when a breaking ball veered toward his head. He slowly got up and acted fearful of what was coming next.

“I was playing stupid so he’d throw me a fastball,” Santiago said. “It worked great, didn’t it.”

And Gwynn provided the final run with a two-out single in the eighth, giving him 38 RBIs this season. He didn’t get his 38th RBI last year until July 15. He is on a pace to drive in 116 runs, 44 more than his career high.

Gwynn, who leads the league with a .358 batting average and the major leagues with 76 hits, is in such a groove that he no longer hates Wrigley Field with quite the same passion. The bleacher bums haven’t forgotten him, and they continue to ridicule him about everything from his weight to his sunglasses, but even they can’t squelch his fun.

“Actually, they’ve been pretty funny,” Gwynn said. “They were doing the old, ‘Fee-fi-fo-fum, Tony Gwynn’s a . . . bum,’ but in the sixth inning (Tuesday), someone stood up and started yelling, ‘Slim Fast, Slim Fast.’ The whole section started yelling it. Then, a guy stood up and says, ‘Ultra Slim Fast, Ultra Slim Fast.’

“Man, I was rolling. I tried not to turn around, but I was rolling it was so funny.”

The only ones not amused Wednesday were the Cubs, who have lost five consecutive home games. The Padres, with two victories, are only one shy of their total at Wrigley the past two seasons combined.

Perhaps, it was suggested to the Padres, it’s not so bad playing at Wrigley Field, after all.

“On days like this, I’ll take it every time,” Rasmussen said.