They waited as long as they could. They may have even entertained a trade offer or two.

But finally, the Detroit Tigers announced Monday they were picking up the $5.4 million option on catcher Alex Avila's contract for the 2015 season.

"Well, like we said before, we don’t have to do it yet. We usually wait on all those things until we have to do them," general manager Dave Dombrowski said at last week's news conference to announce the re-signing of Victor Martinez.

The team had until Nov. 20 to decide on Avila's option, or decline it for $200,000, and send him back to salary arbitration.

There were reports that the Tigers had entertained trade offers for Avila at the General Managers Meetings last week.

"I wouldn’t get into any individual discussions," Dombrowski said. "I would say that when you’re at the General Managers meetings, I was probably asked about every player just about that we have, at one time or another."

Avila's option would've vested automatically if he'd made the All-Star team in 2014, finished top 15 in MVP voting or won a Silver Slugger

Provided everyone's healthy, the Tigers are pretty solid defensively up the middle with a potential catching platoon of Avila/James McCann, Ian Kinsler at second and Jose Iglesias at short, along with recent trade acquisition Anthony Gose in center field.

Avila led the American League with 36 baserunners caught stealing, and was second in catcher caught stealing with 26.