SEATTLE -- Not much has slowed the Mariners in the opening days of the season, but Mother Nature put on the brakes Wednesday as Seattle’s game against the White Sox on Thursday was postponed due to a forecast of rain in Chicago.

The White Sox’s home opener has been pushed back to Friday at 11:10 a.m. PT/1:10 p.m. CT at Guaranteed Rate Field, taking advantage of an off-day already scheduled as a provision for poor weather. The three-game series is scheduled to conclude with 11:10 a.m. PT games on Saturday and Sunday before the Mariners head to Kansas City for four games.

The Mariners have opened the year 7-1, the best start in franchise history, despite trading away many of their mainstays from last season and featuring a 25-man roster with 13 players who are in their first year in the organization.

One of those newcomers, rookie southpaw Yusei Kikuchi, will start Friday’s game against White Sox right-hander Reynaldo Lopez. Kikuchi, a 27-year-old from Japan, is 0-0 with a 2.53 ERA in his first two Major League starts.

The Mariners got a jump on the rest of MLB by winning two games against the A’s in the Opening Series in Tokyo a week before the regular-season openers for everyone else and then went 5-1 in their first homestand against the Red Sox and Angels.

Thursday’s postponement was the Mariners’ first in Chicago since April 27, 2009, and the ninth in franchise history.

The Mariners planned to fly to Chicago as scheduled on Wednesday and now will have an extra day before resuming play.

Other than the scheduled week between games in Japan and U.S. following the Opening Series appearances in Tokyo in 2012 and again this year, this will be the first time the Mariners have had consecutive off-days in the middle of a season since April 7-10, 2007, when they were snowed out four straight days in Cleveland.

That year, the Mariners and Indians got in four innings of Cleveland’s home opener on April 6, but couldn’t even get started the following three days and wound up making up the games later in the year.

The Mariners also had two straight days without official games on May 14-15, 2011, in Cleveland, but in that instance they started the game on May 14 before it was halted after the first inning and were rained out again the following day.