Mississippi High School Baseball Player of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

Two grand slams in four games — what the March ballot actually shows

Start with the sharpest number on the March 5, 2026 ballot: Kevin Roberts Jr of Jackson Prep batted .636 across four games, hit three home runs including two grand slams, drove in 13 runs, and scored eight times. That is not a stat line you see often in a single week of high school baseball anywhere.

He shared the ballot with seven other nominees, including Drew Davis of Sumrall, who threw a complete game allowing 3 hits, 1 run, and 18 strikeouts against West Lauderdale. Both performances are legitimate Player of the Week arguments by any measure. That tension — a dominant offensive week against a dominant pitching week — is what makes this poll worth watching. The ballot doesn't pick; voters do.

The Feb 18, 2026 field had 10 nominees and its own contested logic. River Groue of St. Martin threw 6.1 innings with 1 hit, 1 walk, and 17 strikeouts. DK Wallace of Ridgeland hit 6 times including a homer and two triples AND threw 5 innings with 10 strikeouts and 2 earned runs in the same week — pitcher and hitter on one line. Maddox Culpepper of Brandon went 2-for-3 with a home run, 6 RBI, AND threw 5 innings of shutout ball with 3 strikeouts. Two-way nominees are common enough here that voters who only look at the batting line are missing half the picture.

No confirmed winner is on record for either week — SI does not publish a searchable winner-announcement article for this poll, so the outcome lives only in the closed ballot. What the confirmed nominees do tell you is the performance bar. A week that does not clear roughly 4 RBI and either a sub-2.00 ERA or a .600 average is unlikely to earn the nod from Reed Green's editors.

Eight names, one statewide ballot — the MHSAA and MAIS mix

The Mississippi baseball poll is a tighter list than the football poll. Where football ran 12 to 34 nominees in a given week, both confirmed 2026 baseball ballots capped at 8 to 10 names. That matters for campaign math: each vote pulls more percentage weight when the field is eight instead of thirty.

The field is also genuinely statewide — and genuinely mixed. The March 5 ballot pulled from Tupelo in the northeast, Jackson Prep and Jackson Academy in the central metro, Sumrall in southeast Mississippi, Poplarville down near the Louisiana line, Center Hill in DeSoto County in the northwest, Mooreville in Lee County, and Washington School in the Delta. Public schools and MAIS private schools on the same list, no geographic bracket.

Three MAIS private schools on an eight-name ballot is not unusual for Mississippi baseball. Jackson Prep, Jackson Academy, and Washington School all draw from tight networks of families and alumni who are accustomed to organizing for school events. That density matters in a poll this small — a school community of a few hundred that moves together can clear a ballot of eight more decisively than a large public school program whose fans are diffuse and slower to consolidate.

Sunday night is the whole game

Both confirmed 2026 baseball polls closed Sunday at 11:59 p.m. Pacific — March 5 closed March 8, Feb 18 closed Feb 22. The ballot goes live a few days earlier, but the meaningful window is Saturday through Sunday. Most casual visitors land once when the article first circulates and don't come back. The campaigns that win are the ones still active on Sunday afternoon.

Getting your player nominated is the prior step. Send the stat line to Reed Green at [email protected] or at @reed_green7 on X. The most useful submission has: player name, school, position, the full box (average or ERA, extra-base hits, RBI or strikeouts), the opponent, and the final score. Two-way lines — if your player both hit and pitched in the same week — need both halves. A clean submission that arrives before Sunday gives the editors what they need while the ballot is still being built.

Once the ballot is live, the contest is reach. The unlimited cap means the ceiling is how many real people you can get to the page, not how many times one person clicks. A team group chat that pushes the link Sunday morning, a parent booster page that posts again after church, the alumni who still follow the program — those are the three hours that decide a tight race here. For weekly open polls with this structure, organized vote-support campaigns exist because the mechanic rewards reach, not just enthusiasm.

For background on how weekly fan polls work in general, the how-to guide covers the recurring cadence. More Mississippi high school fan votes are listed at /usa/mississippi/. The full national directory is at /usa/.