The Post's Preseason Baseball Player of the Year voting: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the preseason baseball vote is and who runs it

The Post's Preseason Baseball Player of the Year voting is a public poll that lets readers choose a standout Florida high school baseball player before the season gets underway. The organizer is The Post, a publisher whose reporting spans high school sports across the state, and the ballot lives on Crowdsignal, reachable through poll.fm. In site terms this is a sport-vertical award, and it is a preseason edition of the paper's broader player-of-the-year recognition, which continues into its postseason coverage once the spring season ends.

The mechanic is a public vote: anyone who opens the ballot can select a nominee and submit, with no account creation, no email step and no fee anywhere on the page. Every nominee is a minor, so the description here names only the publisher, the sport and the season, never a player's name. The schools represented in recent editions come from Florida communities, and the paper identifies each nominee by school and field position, such as shortstop, catcher or third base, on the ballot itself.

The paper treats the preseason vote as reader engagement rather than a formal all-state selection, and the award coverage that follows in summer is presented separately. A supporter weighing how much the poll result matters should read it as a fan measurement layered on top of the paper's editorial process, not as the process itself.

The dated record for this ballot

Confirmed editions of the preseason vote ran in 2022, 2025 and 2026. The 2022 edition is the earliest verified run, and the repeated February cycles earn the program its annual tag. Voting in every confirmed edition has fallen in the month of February, which makes the preseason window predictable even where the precise dates are not.

Most recently, the 2026 ballot carried the deadline in the paper's own coverage: "Voting will remain open until noon on Wednesday, February 18." That closing hour mattered, because the ballot is an unlimited-vote poll and the final tallies can move sharply in the last day. When the count was displayed, the leading nominee held 44% and the runner-up 30%.

The paper has also indicated the shape of the season around the vote. Its stated plan was to begin rolling out content highlighting every state champion and Player of the Year winner starting the first week of June, which puts the preseason poll months ahead of that summer recognition.

What the paper leaves unpublished ahead of the window is a nomination schedule, a nominee roster, and an opening date for the next edition; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The full nominee list surfaces solely on the live ballot, and only once voting is underway.

How a supporter votes on the ballot today

Voting takes place on a Crowdsignal poll reachable through poll.fm. The supporter opens the ballot page, reviews the nominee list, marks the circle beside the player they favour, and submits. No account is needed, no email is verified and no payment appears anywhere in the flow. After submission the page shows the running percentage share for each nominee.

The stated rule on vote frequency comes from the paper's own election coverage, which invites readers to come back to the ballot again and again without limit. That makes this ballot different from polls that enforce a per-day ceiling, and it means a determined supporter base can legitimately return to the page repeatedly during the open window. The 2026 edition accepted votes until noon on February 18, after which the ballot closed and the final percentages were displayed.

The format carries two practical consequences. First, the ballot is single-choice, so backing a player means committing to that selection on every visit rather than splitting votes across nominees. Second, the nominee list appears on the ballot alone, so anyone planning their support should open the ballot once the window begins instead of holding out for a roster announcement that never comes.

Because every nominee is a minor, the responsible framing for any support campaign is one organized by families, teammates and school communities around the paper's own unlimited-vote rule, not around pressure on the students themselves.

How this ballot sits beside its Florida neighbours

The Post's preseason baseball vote is not the only reader poll of its kind in Florida. A cluster of weekly programmes covers Central Florida high school sports, each a separate publication vote with its own route on this site: the Central Florida Flag Football Player of the Week, the Central Florida High School Baseball Player of the Week, the Central Florida High School Boys Basketball Player of the Week, and the football, girls basketball and girls flag football editions linked below.

Three differences set the preseason baseball ballot apart from that weekly family. It is annual rather than weekly, so a supporter gets a single concentrated window each February instead of a rolling series. It is a player-of-the-year award rather than a player-of-the-week honor, which raises the stakes of the result for the communities behind each nominee. And its stated unlimited-vote rule is more permissive than the daily-return patterns many weekly polls use.

For a nominee's supporters, that combination matters most near the deadline. A weekly series forgives a missed day; a single February ballot with a fixed noon close does not. Anyone coordinating support for this vote should treat the closing hour as the hard edge of the campaign and plan repeat visits in the days before it.

Strengthening support for a preseason nominee

This ballot rewards sustained, organized participation more than any single burst. The paper's stated rule permits unlimited voting, so the highest-impact move is breadth of people plus depth of returns: every family member, teammate and classmate who opens the poll.fm link is a fresh voter, and each of them can come back throughout the February window.

Ground the push in the school community. Pass the ballot link through the channels families already use, name the closing time in every reminder, and ask supporters to vote early rather than waiting for the final hours. The nominee roster appears only on the live ballot, so early voting also gives a campaign time to adjust once the percentages are visible.

For a fuller walkthrough of tactics that fit single-choice public polls, read our votes guide, and for what purchased support can and cannot do under an organizer's rules, see the service overview before deciding anything.