After getting swept by the Texas Rangers this week, the Seattle Mariners have a much-needed off day on Thursday before getting back into action on Friday night against the Houston Astros.

It's been a horrendous start for the Mariners, who entered the season with championship aspirations. Instead, they are 4-9 and hitting .184 as a team, the worst in baseball. On top of that, they've squandered some of the best pitching performances in the league through 13 games, and they've also played extremely shoddy defense.

And those defensive woes extend up and down the roster, from Brendan Donovan to Randy Arozarena to Leo Rivas to JP Crawford to Josh Naylor to Connor Joe's key misplay in Wednesday's 3-0 defeat.

And while the defense has been poor, the offensive woes as a whole do seem to be the biggest issue for this team right now. The .184 batting average doesn't even tell the full story. The M's top three hitters, Cal Raleigh, Julio Rodriguez and Josh Naylor, are each hitting under .160. Neither Rodriguez or Naylor have even a single extra-base hit so far.

We spoke to ESPN MLB Insider Buster Olney on the most recent 'Refuse To Lose' podcast to task him if the struggles of those three are the single biggest problem for the M's thus far:

"That's a huge part of it. And I remember when I covered the Yankees, Joe Torre, the Hall of Fame manager said to a group of reporters when the Yankees were going through a lull, 'look, when your offense isn't going, you look dead. You just look completely flat. And he's right.

And so when, day after day after day, when there's no margin for error, then mistakes that you make on defense or a particular player struggled, they're all magnified. Now that doesn't mean that you're not trying to shake it up. You're not just assuming that everyone's going to come back early in the year.

You see young players affected by this, where a team that's struggling will make roster moves and it's because the young players have the ability to be sent back to the minors. They get switched around. Maybe the lineup gets switched around, different things change.

But yes, if those three guys don't hit, then they're going to look flat. That's just the way it goes."

The Mariners and Astros will play on Friday night at 6:40 p.m. PT.

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