SEATTLE -- After a week on the disabled list, Mariners shortstop Ketel Marte said his sprained left thumb feels fully recovered, and he'll play rehab games for Triple-A Tacoma from Tuesday through Friday before rejoining the club.
Marte's 15-day DL stint expires on June 6, and the Mariners expect him to be back in the lineup that night when they return home from the upcoming road trip to San Diego and Texas.
Still wearing a wrap on his thumb, Marte hit in the cage for a third straight day on Sunday and ran the bases pregame. He fielded ground balls and hit on Saturday without issue as well.
"Everything was good," said the 22-year-old, who hit .276 with 21 runs and five stolen bases in 40 games before injuring the thumb sliding into second base May 21 in Cincinnati. "I thank God for helping me get back quick. I feel good and ready to go. I feel like normal again."
"A couple days off and he's got fresh legs and everything else," manager Scott Servais said. "He looks good."
Moving on: Servais acknowledged he didn't get much sleep Saturday night after his team dropped a 6-5 decision to the Twins on a game that ended in a rare 2-4-5-6 double play with Shawn O'Malley and Kyle Seager both thrown out after Seager got caught in a rundown trying to advance on a pitch in the dirt.
"That was a crazy play and not one you practice too often," Servais said before Sunday's series finale. "You certainly don't expect a game to end that way. It just happened with guys that were probably a little too aggressive in that spot. But I don't fault our guys at all. We had many, many chances early in that game to take care of business and we didn't. It's over. We'll let it go."
Digging deep: Reliever Nick Vincent threw a career-high 49 pitches in his two-inning stint in the seventh and eighth innings of Saturday's loss, which Servais admitted wasn't an ideal situation.
"We extended him more than he's ever been extended," Servais said. "There were some long at-bats in his second inning and when it got to that point, unfortunately we were at the spot in the lineup between [right-handers Eduardo] Nunez and [Brian] Dozier where it's tough to pull him. He got through it, and obviously he's probably not available for us today. It was just a lot of pitches. That was concerning, but your hands get tied sometimes in games, and he's done such a great job for us, you trust him to get through it, and he did."
Vincent's previous high this year was 25 pitches, and he'd averaged 13.3 per game in his first 21 outings. His previous career high in five seasons in the Majors was 40 pitches in an extra-innings game last April 9 for the Padres, after which he was sent down to Triple-A and pitched again four days later.
"It's a little tired," said Vincent, who has a 2.45 ERA in 22 innings, of his arm. "Tomorrow will probably be a little more sore. But I got my work in today. I ran, worked out, hopefully that will get most of it out, but we'll see. It was just a tough spot to be in. [Steve] Cishek threw in the ninth, but you're not going to bring [Joaquin] Benoit into a game like that. It's one of those things where you can go out there and throw 20 pitches in two innings, but it just wasn't that day."