Gadsden Times Preseason Baseball Player of the Year Poll: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Gadsden Times preseason baseball poll is

The Gadsden Times Preseason Baseball Player of the Year Poll is a fan vote organized by The Gadsden Times, the daily newspaper published in Gadsden, Alabama. The poll asks readers to choose a preseason player of the year from the newspaper's high school baseball coverage, and it runs as a public online ballot rather than a judges' award or an editors-only selection. The name tells you the timing as well as the subject: it is a preseason exercise, meaning the vote is meant to be settled before the high school baseball season gets fully under way, and the confirmed voting window falls in February.

The ballot is hosted on Crowdsignal, which most readers encounter through its poll.fm web address. Crowdsignal is a general purpose polling platform, so the newspaper builds its ballot there and shares the link through its own coverage. The confirmed address for the ballot is https://poll.fm/15084895. When a poll on that platform closes, the page stays online in a closed state that shows the outcome, which is why supporters who arrive late can still see how the vote finished.

Geographically, the program belongs to the Gadsden market in northeast Alabama. The newspaper's high school sports coverage draws nominees from schools across that area, and the ballot options correspond to schools in the paper's coverage footprint. This page deliberately keeps the market description at the level of the city and state named by the organizer, because the precise school list changes with each edition; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Because the nominees are high school students, this reference page describes the program without reprinting any individual athlete's name. Everything a supporter needs to take part, including the full list of options, lives on the newspaper's own ballot page while the vote is open.

Confirmed dates and how the schedule works

Two edition years are confirmed for this program, 2022 and 2025, and the newspaper has run the vote as an annual feature of its preseason baseball coverage. The recurrence matters for planning: a reader who wants to support a nominee should expect the ballot to appear in February, ahead of the high school season, rather than at the end of the spring. The next expected edition is 2026, and the newspaper has consistently promoted the poll through its own sports coverage when a new ballot goes live.

What is not confirmed, for any edition, is a printed pair of open and close dates. The Gadsden Times announces the poll through its coverage and the Crowdsignal page goes live at that moment, but no standing calendar entry publishes the exact day voting starts or the exact hour it ends. Supporters who need a deadline, for example to coordinate a team-wide push before the window shuts, should rely on the ballot page's own status notice rather than any outside summary; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

The February placement has practical consequences. Preseason polls tend to run on short windows, because the point is to crown a player before games begin, so a supporter who hears about the ballot late in the month may have very little time left to participate. If the newspaper's announcement is the starting gun, the sensible approach is to follow its sports desk closely through early February and treat any day in the month as a possible opening day.

Another consequence of the short, annual rhythm is that a closed ballot stays online. The confirmed 2025 ballot on Crowdsignal is marked closed and shows the finishing order with shares and raw counts for the leading options. That closed page is the most concrete evidence of how the most recent edition ran, and it is also the address the newspaper reuses for the current cycle, so checking it in February is the fastest way to learn whether a new poll has opened.

For readers comparing programs across the paper's calendar, the preseason baseball vote is one of several fan ballots The Gadsden Times' market supports. Sibling programs covering other sports run on their own schedules, and a supporter interested in year-round participation can follow the Alabama High School Baseball Player of the Week vote, which keeps the same sport alive week by week once the season itself starts.

Voting rules, limits and what is not published

The ballot page lists no category roster and no per-supporter limit; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. That single sentence covers most of the questions supporters ask about rules, because Crowdsignal ballots are configured per poll and the newspaper does not print a standing rule sheet for this program. Whether the current ballot accepts repeat responses, whether it throttles votes from the same connection, and whether it displays a running tally are all configuration choices visible only on the live page.

The single confirmed category is the one in the program's title: a preseason player of the year for high school baseball. No separate category list has been published for this poll, so supporters should not arrive expecting a multi-category ballot. If the newspaper adds divisions or a second question in a future edition, the change will appear on the ballot itself when the window opens; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Eligibility is likewise a live-page question. The nominee pool is drawn from the newspaper's high school baseball coverage area in northeast Alabama, but the published criteria for inclusion, and any statement about write-ins or late additions, are not available in advance. A supporter who believes a deserving player was left off the ballot should contact the newspaper's sports desk rather than the polling platform, because Crowdsignal hosts the ballot but does not choose the nominees.

On the subject of outside help, the honest summary is that no rule for this ballot addresses bulk or purchased votes either way. That silence cuts both directions. It means no published permission, and it also means the newspaper has reserved room to discount votes it considers irregular, as organizers of similar newspaper polls commonly do. A push that looks padded with activity no real community produced risks being discounted along with the votes in question, which helps nobody, including the nominee.

Supporters who want to study the general question of paid vote services, how such offers are structured and what the typical risks are, can read our award votes page for context. The essential point for this specific ballot is simpler: ordinary, genuine participation from real people in the Gadsden community is exactly what the organizer set the poll up to measure, and nothing published about this program suggests any substitute for that.

How to support a nominee and get more votes the honest way

The literal voting sequence is short. A supporter opens the Crowdsignal page at poll.fm, reviews the nominee list, selects one option and submits. The platform saves the response and shows a confirmation view. On a phone, the page is a single scrolling ballot, so the whole action takes well under a minute. The only friction most supporters report is finding the link, which is why the newspaper's announcement of each edition matters so much.

For families and communities rallying behind a nominee, the tactics that work are the ones that produce real participation. Share the ballot link directly, not a screenshot, so every tap lands on the live page. Ask school communities, booster groups, travel ball teammates and local social pages to pass the link along, and time the biggest pushes for the days when attention is highest, usually right after the newspaper's own posts. Reminders matter more than announcements: a person who saw the link once and meant to vote usually needs one direct nudge before the window closes.

Because no per-supporter limit is published for this ballot, do not build a plan around repeat voting. If the live page permits multiple responses, that is the platform's configuration speaking, and it can change between editions. A campaign built on supporters voting once and recruiting others is durable under any configuration; a campaign built on one person clicking repeatedly is fragile and, depending on the organizer's unpublished tolerance, potentially counterproductive. Confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Timing discipline is the other half of the playbook. Preseason windows are short by design, and a February ballot gives a community little slack if it starts organizing late. The strongest communities name a point person before the season starts, watch for the newspaper's announcement, and have the share-ready link out within hours of the ballot going live. That preparation costs nothing and outperforms every shortcut.

Finally, keep the ballot in context. This poll is one of several fan votes in the same market and on the same platform family. Supporters who enjoy the preseason baseball vote can carry the same habits into the paper's other ballots, including the Alabama High School Football Player of the Year vote and the Alabama High School Boys Basketball Player of the Year vote. The mechanics are similar, the communities overlap, and a school that organizes well for one ballot tends to do the same for the others. General questions about how votes for awards work are covered on our award votes page.