The Courier & Press Preseason Baseball Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Courier & Press preseason baseball vote is and who runs it

Each spring the Evansville Courier & Press hands its preseason baseball coverage to its readers through this award, a fan vote asking who will stand out before the season's first pitches decide the question on the field. The paper publishes under the Courier Press masthead, and the baseball award belongs to the same family as its athlete of the week polls, which use the identical question format and the same voting platform.

Crowdsignal at poll.fm carries the hosting, the lightweight balloting service behind the newspaper's interactive sports polls. The baseball ballot lives at poll.fm/15274208, and the 2025 edition of that page is titled as a direct question: who is the Courier & Press preseason baseball player of the year. The nominee list names high school players from schools across the paper's southwestern Indiana coverage area, each entry pairing the player with the school he attends.

Mechanically this is a plain public vote. Any reader who reaches the ballot can select a nominee and submit, and the publisher's own article states that votes can be cast as many times as wished until the Saturday 10 a.m. CT deadline. No nomination round precedes the vote; the newspaper selects the preseason baseball field itself and hands the choice to its audience.

The dated record: editions, the April window and the 2025 result

Two baseball editions sit on the programme's timeline, 2022 and 2025, and the award is annual: the Evansville Courier & Press published its preseason baseball player of the year article again for the 2026 season, showing the vote running that spring as well. The window falls in April, matching the preseason calendar, with the closing deadline set at Saturday at 10 a.m. CT on the ballot's final day.

The 2025 result is the clearest dated figure attached to the programme. When that ballot closed, the leading nominee held 40 percent of 23,072 votes, a decisive margin over the rest of the preseason baseball field, and the newspaper reported the outcome in its high school sports coverage once the poll closed.

The publisher prints no advance pair of dates bracketing the baseball window; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The nominee roster for each new spring is likewise revealed only when the ballot goes live, since the field depends on which players the paper selects from the upcoming rosters. Round dates for the Crowdsignal poll are not promoted separately anywhere for this market, so the live timing appears nowhere except on the ballot itself.

For anyone organizing support, the practical reading is simple: treat April as the voting month, expect the Saturday 10 a.m. CT cutoff, and check the ballot at the start of the season rather than guessing from the 2025 or 2022 editions.

How a supporter votes on the Courier & Press baseball ballot today

All voting happens inside the Crowdsignal form at poll.fm/15274208. A supporter opens the ballot, reads the list of preseason baseball nominees the Evansville Courier & Press has selected, marks the circle next to the chosen player and submits. The form registers the choice at once and displays the running share for each nominee, so the standings are visible while the vote is still open.

The publisher's stated rule is the most generous part of the format: you can cast your votes as many times as you wish until Saturday at 10 a.m. CT. That means a supporter is free to return to the poll.fm page day after day through the April window and submit again on each visit. No ceiling per supporter is printed anywhere on the ballot, and no eligibility wording restricts who may take part, so the effective constraint is simply the deadline.

The ballot page prints no account or registration requirement, and the newspaper's voting instructions describe nothing more than casting votes on the form. Should Crowdsignal introduce a verification step for the baseball poll, that step will show up on the poll page itself rather than in the paper's coverage.

Because the roster resets with each season, the names on the ballot when you arrive will be the current spring's nominees, not the 2025 field. Read the list fresh, confirm the closing time printed with the poll, and plan returns around the Saturday morning cutoff the publisher states.

How this ballot sits beside its Indiana neighbours

The Courier & Press preseason baseball vote is the baseball entry in a crowded Indiana fan-vote field. Its closest sibling is the Evansville paper's own football player of the year ballot, run by the same newspaper on the same Crowdsignal platform but tied to the fall season rather than the April baseball window. The two programmes share a masthead, a question format and an unlimited-voting culture, so tactics that work on the football ballot transfer directly.

Statewide programmes sit alongside it. The Indiana SI boys basketball award covers the winter court season, the Indiana SI football awards for class 3A and class 4A split the football field by class, and the weekly Indiana high school football player vote runs as a series through the fall. The athlete of the week vote from Bloomington's Herald-Times brings a different Indiana publisher into the same space with its own reader ballot.

What makes the preseason baseball ballot distinct is its timing and its scope. It is the only confirmed baseball award in this group, it runs in April when the other programmes are dormant, and it draws its nominee list from the Evansville Courier & Press coverage area rather than the whole state. A supporter following Indiana high school sports across the year can move from the fall football votes to the winter basketball ballot to this spring baseball poll without leaving the Crowdsignal format behind.

Strengthening support in the Courier & Press baseball vote

The format rewards persistence. Because the publisher allows votes as many times as wished until Saturday at 10 a.m. CT, the winning campaign in a Courier & Press preseason baseball poll is usually the one whose supporters return most reliably across the whole April window, not the one that spikes on the closing morning. A nominee's circle should treat the ballot like a daily habit: a morning submission, an evening submission, and reminders through the team's group chats.

Reach matters as much as frequency. A high school baseball nominee draws from teammates, families, students and local followers, and each additional person who votes repeatedly multiplies the daily total. Sharing the poll.fm link directly, pinning it where the school community already gathers, and naming the deadline in every reminder are the moves that fit this ballot's unlimited rule.

The publisher's own printed rule sets no ceiling and no eligibility restriction, so nothing in the Courier & Press baseball format penalizes an organized push. What the organizer does not publish is any guidance on outside vote services, and a purchased volume behaves no differently from any other vote once it lands. The practical playbook for this kind of unlimited fan vote, built around return schedules and community reach, is laid out at how to get more votes online.