Trade school change: Aztecs gets diploma, then MLB call-up | News center

In the year In 2021, Troy Melton (’22, Marketing) from San Diego State University thought he might have to make a once-in-a-lifetime leap.

Melton, a right-handed pitcher for the Aztecs, was eligible for the MLB draft as a junior last year, awaiting a once-in-a-lifetime call-up that would lead to a multimillion-dollar rookie contract with a signing bonus.

The call never came.

Melton stayed in school and completed his marketing degree from SDSU’s Fowler College of Business in May 2022. Two months later, on July 18, Melton got the call he’d been waiting for to learn he had been drafted by the Detroit Tigers. Fourth round draft pick. The next day he headed to the teams training facility, Lakeland, Florida.

Melton says he plans to get his BSeither way.

Melton, the only Aztec selected in this year’s draft, said, “MLB has a great program, if you graduate before you graduate, they will pay for the rest of your education. “If I had left last year, it would have taken longer because of the scheduling conflict, but I would have found a way to get my degree from San Diego State. That was important to me.”

Good fit

Melton chose to get a marketing degree from SDSU “partly because SDSU has a great business department and partly because it’s a versatile degree,” he said. “Also, marketing was a business program that fit my personality and attracted the best of me.”

Although Melton didn’t immediately enter his chosen field of marketing, he saw many of the skills he learned in the classroom transfer to the baseball field.

While he’s hoping for a long and successful career as a professional athlete, Melton knows at a relatively young age that those days will eventually come to an end. But with his marketing degree in hand, he’ll be ready for that inevitable conclusion.

“I’m proud that I got my degree before signing with the Tigers,” Melton said. “It’s something I can say I’ve earned and I’ll be ahead of a lot of my baseball peers when my playing career is over. It really shows the hard work and time I’ve put into my academics. Nobody can take that away from me.”