Vote for the Eagle-Gazette Preseason Baseball Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Eagle-Gazette preseason baseball poll is and who runs it

The Eagle-Gazette runs the Preseason Baseball Player of the Year as a reader award decided entirely by public ballot. The publisher's sports desk covers high school baseball in its Ohio readership area, and the poll asks supporters to pick the top player in the region as the season begins, which is why it carries the preseason label rather than a year-end one.

Balloting runs on Crowdsignal (poll.fm), the same polling platform many publishers use for reader votes. The current ballot lives at poll.fm/16814178, and it is the 2026 edition of the series. Each edition is a standalone poll page: the publisher opens it, supporters vote, and the page then switches to a closed state that keeps the final tally visible.

The nominees are high school baseball players nominated from schools in the publisher's coverage area. Schools named on the 2026 ballot include Fairfield Union, Liberty Union, Bloom-Carroll, Amanda-Clearcreek and Berne Union. The poll sits in the sport vertical, and its mechanic is a plain public vote rather than a judged award or a nomination round.

The dated record: editions, the voting window, and what is not published

Three editions of the preseason baseball poll are confirmed: 2022, 2025 and 2026. The recurrence is annual, with each edition anchored to the spring, and the voting window falls in March and April ahead of the high school baseball season. The 2026 edition is the most recent, and its ballot page now shows as closed.

The one dated rule the publisher has printed comes from its own coverage of the poll: "The voting period will be open from 6 a.m. on Monday until 5 p.m. on Friday." That Monday-to-Friday shape is the window a supporter works within each cycle. The same coverage states that "Fans have the opportunity to vote multiple times," which makes repeat visits across the week the core of any serious support effort.

When the 2026 ballot closed, the leading nominee held 54 percent of the vote on a total of 22,307 votes cast. That figure is the only published tally for the program, and it gives a sense of the scale a winning campaign in this poll has reached.

Several facts are not published anywhere the organizer maintains. The Eagle-Gazette has not printed the next preseason ballot's calendar dates, nor a nominee roster for a future edition, nor any per-supporter ceiling or eligibility rule; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The publisher also does not state whether a nomination round precedes voting.

How a supporter votes in the Eagle-Gazette baseball poll today

Nothing about this ballot asks for technique, and that simplicity explains the volume it draws. A supporter opens the Eagle-Gazette's preseason baseball ballot on poll.fm, reads the list of nominees, selects the player they want to back, and presses the vote button. No account, login or payment sits in front of the vote on the 2026 ballot page.

Timing matters more than technique here. The Eagle-Gazette's stated voting period runs from 6 a.m. on Monday until 5 p.m. on Friday, so a vote cast Saturday night lands nowhere. Supporters who want a nominee to finish first plan their returns inside that Monday-to-Friday span, and because the publisher states that fans may vote multiple times, the poll rewards a daily habit rather than a single visit.

Once the Friday 5 p.m. close passes, the ballot page flips to a closed state. The 2026 page still displays the nominee list and the final percentages, which is how the 54 percent result on 22,307 total votes remains visible after voting ended. Votes attempted after the close have no effect on that edition.

For the next edition, the practical sequence is the same, but the address will be a fresh poll.fm page published by the Eagle-Gazette when the March and April window arrives. The publisher has not printed the next edition's dates or its nominee roster in advance, so details for the current cycle appear only on the live ballot itself.

How this poll sits beside its Ohio neighbours

Ohio runs a crowded field of publisher-hosted high school sports votes, and the Eagle-Gazette's preseason baseball poll is the baseball-specific entry in it. Six sibling programs cover the state's bigger markets: the Akron-Area High School Athlete of the Week, the Cincinnati Enquirer Athlete of the Week, the Columbus Dispatch Athlete of the Week, the Dayton Daily News High School Athlete of the Week, the Dayton High School Football Player of the Week, and the Fox 8 FNTD Player of the Year Vote.

Three differences set the Eagle-Gazette poll apart. First, the sport: no other program in the group is devoted to baseball, and this one runs in the preseason rather than weekly through a season. Second, the cadence: the siblings are weekly athlete-of-the-week formats, while this poll is a single preseason player-of-the-year decision per edition, confirmed in 2022, 2025 and 2026. Third, the scale of the finish: a closing tally of 22,307 votes with the leader at 54 percent is a heavier total than a typical weekly ballot accumulates.

For a nominee camp, that shape matters. A weekly vote resets every seven days and rewards a standing routine; this poll is a single sprint inside one March-to-April window, where the Monday-to-Friday voting period and the multiple-vote allowance decide the outcome. Support built for a weekly Ohio ballot does not transfer unchanged to a preseason poll with a fixed Friday close.

Strengthening support for a nominee in this poll

Everything that works in this poll follows from two published facts: the window runs Monday 6 a.m. to Friday 5 p.m., and the Eagle-Gazette says fans may vote multiple times. A campaign that treats the week as five separate voting days, with a reminder to each school community every morning, collects far more ballots than a single announcement on Monday afternoon.

Ground the push in the school itself. The 2026 ballot drew nominees from Fairfield Union, Liberty Union, Bloom-Carroll, Amanda-Clearcreek and Berne Union, and the poll's audience is exactly those communities. A team account posting the ballot link each morning of the voting period, with the close time stated, does more than any generic plea.

On outside help: the Eagle-Gazette has not printed a rule on purchased or automated participation for this poll, so nobody can state what the organizer would do about it. What is certain is the organizer's own lever, repeat voting by real supporters, is free and explicitly permitted. For a fuller picture of legitimate tactics, see how to get more votes online, and for the service side, award-vote support.