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

The one thing most voters get wrong about this poll

Most people arriving here assume the Missouri Baseball Player of the Week works like the Missouri Athlete of the Week — the multi-sport poll that covers basketball, wrestling, swimming, and the rest. It doesn't. The AOTW caps voters at one vote per person every six hours. The baseball poll has no cap. The organizer's exact wording, confirmed across multiple 2025 articles, is: "You may vote as many times as you'd like."

That difference matters for every campaign decision. A team that assumes the six-hour rule and paces votes accordingly is underperforming against a nominee whose supporters know the real mechanic. And since both polls live at si.com/high-school/missouri, the confusion is easy to make.

The second thing people miss: the close day is not fixed. The April 21 ballot closed Sunday April 27. The May 20 ballot closed Monday May 26. Both at 11:59 p.m. Central — but a full day apart. Check the close day inside each week's article before you plan anything.

What three 2025 results tell you about winning percentages here

SI doesn't publish raw vote counts for the Missouri baseball poll — only percentages. But three confirmed 2025 results give a real picture of what winning looks like on a 20-name ballot.

Read that range. Noland won at 40.25% — meaning 59.75% of the vote split across the other 19 nominees, and he still cleared them all. Bowers nearly hit 50% in a separate week. Cradick's 47% came with a performance — inside-the-park home run, 6 RBI — that gave his Howell supporters something specific to share. These are Ozarks and southeast Missouri programs winning over Kansas City and St. Louis suburban nominees in the same poll. The geographic spread says nothing about who can win; the mobilization does.

A 40% win is achievable for almost any nominee with a motivated school behind them. A 50% win usually means something organized happened — one community moved faster and wider than nineteen others.

Twenty nominees, one close, and where Missouri's geography fits in

The April 21, 2025 ballot carried 20 names from 20 different Missouri schools: Lee's Summit West and Park Hill from the Kansas City suburbs, Jefferson City and Rockwood Summit from mid-Missouri and St. Louis exurbs, Strafford and Willard from the Springfield metro, Stockton and Lone Jack from small-town Missouri. Saxony Lutheran and Pembroke Hill bringing private-school rosters. Neosho from the far southwest corner.

That geographic spread is consistent from week to week. This is not a metro-dominated ballot. A Class 1 school from the Ozarks and a Class 6 suburban program land on the same list. The difference between them in a fan poll is not enrollment or classification — it is how quickly and completely a school's network actually turns out.

Missouri baseball communities vary in how that network is structured. A Springfield-area school might pull from a broader metro pool of baseball families but route through more disconnected channels. A small Ozarks program — Weaubleau, Stockton, El Dorado Springs — can reach its entire community through one group chat in an afternoon. Brody Irlbeck appeared on both the April 21 and May 20 ballots for Staley, which is a Kansas City north-suburban program that shows up repeatedly; repeat ballot presence suggests consistent editorial attention, which means consistent community organization pays off over a full season, not just in one week.

For more Missouri contests and polls, see /usa/missouri/ and the national directory at /usa/.

Getting a player nominated, then getting them across the line

Two separate efforts determine whether a player wins: getting nominated, and running a real campaign once the ballot is live.

The nomination is editorial — SI's staff builds the 20-name field from the weekend's results. A stat line that doesn't reach the editors doesn't make the ballot regardless of how the performance went. The standard submission: player name, school, position, the full stat line (AB-H-HR-RBI for a hitter; IP-H-ER-K for a pitcher), the opponent, and the final score. Contact information for the Missouri section is at si.com/high-school/missouri. Getting that in Saturday night or Sunday morning — before the ballot is built for Monday — is the difference between making the list and watching from the outside.

Once the ballot is live, the math is straightforward: 20 nominees, unlimited voting, a close that falls Sunday or Monday at 11:59 p.m. Central. The winning range across 2025's confirmed results is 40% to 50%. That means roughly 100 dedicated supporters voting 10 times each puts a nominee in the territory of a winning share — but only if the other 19 nominees' supporters don't do the same. Real mobilization is about widening the circle: every player texting their friend group, the team's socials posting the direct SI link, parents in the dugout chat sharing it Tuesday through close-day. Because the poll is open and settled entirely by turnout, structured vote support exists for polls exactly like this one — where the gap between 40% and 50% comes down to how far the reach extended before the close. The how-to guide covers the weekly fan-poll cadence in more detail if you are running a campaign for the first time.