SEATTLE -- After a week on the rarest of road trips in franchise history, the Mariners returned to T-Mobile Park on Friday to begin a 10-day homestand. And while the club dealt well with the concerns of traveling to Houston and Anaheim during a pandemic, Mariners manager Scott Servais knows it’s not time to let the guard down now.

With two more games postponed Friday due to COVID-19 concerns among the participating teams -- between the Cardinals and Brewers, and the Blue Jays and Phillies -- Servais will continue to reinforce the need to be safe and smart among his own players and staff.

“I’ll continue to have meetings with our guys,” Servais said prior to Friday’s game against the A’s. “I thought we did an excellent job on the road. Once you’re kind of locked into the hotel and just going to the ballpark, it may be a little easier.

“Now that we’re home, certainly families play into it. And the guys who don’t have families in here have to make really good choices on what they’re doing away from the field. We’ll continue to harp on that. It only takes one guy making one bad choice that can put us all in a really bad spot. It’s one of those things we’re going to have to deal with continuously throughout the season and just remind our guys how important it is in the decisions they’re making.”

MLB is reportedly instituting a new policy that will require every team to have a compliance officer travel with them on the road to monitor and reinforce the COVID-19 protocols. Servais said “somebody high up in our front office” will be filling that role in future trips and felt that the Mariners -- after forgetting to follow some of the social-distancing guidelines during the excitement of their first win in Houston -- did a better job in maintaining the protocols.

Mariners reliever Dan Altavilla said the initial road trip went well in terms of players policing themselves.

“Basically everybody stayed at the hotel and just stuck to themselves,” Altavilla said. “Because if you take a chance and leave and happen to test positive, you’re out and you’re just hurting the team. We’re doing a really good job, our staff has been on top of everything. We’re just trying to be smart and stay healthy through this whole thing.”

Catching up with the catchers
With Austin Nola returning to the lineup on Friday after missing three games with a sore knee, the Mariners will carry three catchers on their 30-man roster for the time being. Rookie Joseph Odom activated off the three-man traveling taxi squad on Tuesday after Nola hurt his knee sliding into second base during Monday’s series finale in Houston.

Odom took the spot of one of the 17 pitchers on the initial roster, with Brandon Brennan going on the 10-day injured list with a strained left oblique. While the Mariners still have 10 relievers and six starters, Servais said they’ll likely return to two catchers and 17 pitchers once it’s clear that Nola is fully healthy.

“It seems like he’s going to be fine and good to go,” Servais said. “I’m not going to play him four or five days in a row, but the need for us to carry a third catcher we’ll have a better idea on coming out of this game and how Nola feels going forward.”

Starting catcher Tom Murphy has been on the 10-day IL with a broken bone in his left foot since July 23 and is eligible to be activated any time since it was backdated to July 20. Murphy has been doing some work at the alternate training site in Tacoma, Wash., but Servais said that Murphy needs more time to fully heal.

“He’s not to the point where he’s ready to jump back there and start catching bullpens,” Servais said. “He’s done some of that stuff, but all on one knee. He really hasn’t gotten his feet underneath him behind the plate. That’s really the thing that’s bothered him.

“It really didn’t bother him that much swinging the bat. Running is not a big issue, [that's] not part of Murph’s game. It’s more of the squatting behind the dish and he’s not quite ready to do that yet on a regular basis. He’s moving in the right direction, but it’s been slow.”

With Murphy sidelined, the Mariners have gone the first week with Nola, Odom and Joe Hudson, who have just a total of 15 MLB starts behind the plate between them.