SAN DIEGO -- Just what Luke Voit needed. Just what the Padres needed.

For weeks, the Padres have won games with pitching and defense and the occasional light rally. For weeks, when they didn't win those games, they lamented their inability to slug.

The biggest culprit in the team’s early-season power outage? Voit. Acquired in March with the express purpose of slugging, Voit had tallied only five extra-base hits entering play Friday night. Asked on Wednesday if he could pinpoint a reason the team had struggled in the power department, Voit summed it up succinctly, saying, “Me.”

And then he strode to the plate with two runners on and two outs in the bottom of the sixth inning Friday night. The Padres trailed by three runs, a deficit they’d yet to overcome at Petco Park all season.

“I needed to step up,” Voit said. “I finally got a big situation to come up in. Just slow the game down, look for a pitch that I knew I was going to get.”

He got it -- and he made the most of it. Voit pulverized a hanging slider from Pirates right-hander Wil Crowe. Voit knew it was gone the moment it left his bat. He hopped twice up the first-base line and watched as the ball landed six rows deep in left-center field. Tie game.

“That’s what we brought him in to do -- hit for some power and drive in some runs,” manager Bob Melvin said. “That’s what he’s done his whole career.”

From there, it was straightforward enough for the Padres. Wil Myers’ broken-bat RBI single gave San Diego its first lead in the eighth. Taylor Rogers locked down the ninth inning with his Major League-leading 17th save. The Padres won, 4-3, again stifling any semblance of a losing streak. They’ve yet to drop three straight games all season.

For much of the night, it looked like they might be headed there. And considering the way his first two at-bats went, Voit proved something of an unlikely hero. The hulking Padres slugger struck out in the second and fourth innings. He swung and missed with each of his first six swings, continuing what’s become a worrying trend.

“I'm not used to swinging and missing this much,” Voit said. “I'm out in front of stuff. I'm under sliders. I can hit the high pitch -- and I just haven't been able to hit the high pitch right now. [I need to] just be a hitter and hit the ball, instead of trying to hit it over the scoreboard every time.”

Indeed, the swing-and-miss numbers are not great. Voit has swung at 214 pitches this season. He’s whiffed on 101 of them. That 47.2 percent mark is the worst in baseball among hitters with at least 50 swings.

But here’s the thing: Voit’s plate discipline has actually been solid. Sure, he could chase a little less. But he’s still walking and laying off bad pitches. For the most part, Voit is swinging at the right pitches. Considering his immense power, if he were to begin making slightly more frequent contact, he’d prove hugely valuable in the middle of San Diego's lineup.

“When you’re struggling, you want to swing your way out of it,” Melvin said. “Sometimes, you try a little easier, let the ball travel a little bit farther, especially with the power that he does have to right-center field. Hopefully it’s a springboard for him.”

The Padres could use it. Only the A’s, Nationals and Tigers have hit fewer home runs this season.

And really, aside from their power struggles, the Padres have been a fairly complete team. They’ve played excellent defense and have pitched well. Offensively, they’re reaching base at a decent enough clip. They just haven’t hit for power.

“We’ve been talking about that all year,” Myers said. “We’re winning a lot of games, so it’s hard to talk about our offense not doing so good. We’re winning games. So as long as we’re winning, that’s all that matters.”

Left-hander Sean Manaea pitched seven innings of three-run ball, as he continued the rotation’s excellent start to the season. For much of the night, he looked like a tough-luck loser. Then, Voit sent Petco Park into a frenzy with two outs and two strikes in the sixth.

“That was wild -- I think I had a little too much energy,” Manaea said. “I had just slammed a Red Bull, too, at that moment. So everything was -- it was just a lot. But that’s the stuff you live for. That’s baseball right there. That was really cool.”