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

Thirty names, one Sunday deadline — and most voters don't know either fact

The thing a first-time voter in this poll doesn't expect is the size of the field. On the May 19, 2025 ballot, thirty nominees appeared — all at once, from programs across every OSAA classification. Glencoe, a 6A school in Hillsboro, was listed next to Umpqua Valley Christian, which runs one of the smaller programs in the state. That range is the point. There is no bracket by classification, no metro-only or rural-only filter. Thirty schools compete on one list.

The second thing most visitors miss: votes are unlimited, and the window runs until Sunday at 11:59 p.m. Pacific. By the time a casual fan sees Monday's winner announcement and thinks about it, the ballot has already closed. The entire contest happens inside a single weekend.

Put those two facts together and the structure becomes clear. A school with thirty organized supporters voting repeatedly through Sunday afternoon and evening can out-total a program ten times its size where a thousand fans each voted once on Friday and forgot about it. The field is wide; the window is finite; turnout organization is the variable that decides weeks.

What the confirmed nominees tell you about the competition

The 2025 ballots provide a clean picture of what earns a nomination here and what the competitive landscape looks like.

Pitching dominates the recognizable highlights. August Ware of Glencoe threw a complete-game no-hitter with 18 strikeouts on May 19. That same week, Ryder Hockema of Newport went the distance with 15 strikeouts and allowed two hits. Six weeks later, Drew Bartels of Blanchet Catholic logged a complete game with 10 strikeouts, and Grady Saunders of Thurston struck out 11 while allowing two runs. A dominant start is the clearest path onto the ballot.

But plate performances get through too. JT Girod of Central went 3-for-4 across one game with two home runs, three runs scored, and five RBI — then added a second game going 2-for-2 with a home run, a double, two runs, and two more RBI. CJ Bonner of Cascade Christian went 4-for-4 with a home run and six RBI. Elliot Raiton of Grant hit .833 across three games with three doubles, a home run, six runs, and six RBI.

Two-way weeks are worth noting. Brady Ackerman of Canby combined six shutout innings and seven strikeouts with a 2-for-4 plate game that included a home run — and both halves appeared in his nomination write-up. If a player contributes on the mound and at the plate in the same stretch, Dan Brood tends to include the full line.

Notice the schools. Glencoe is one of the larger 6A programs in Washington County. Newport is a coastal 4A school. Umpqua Valley Christian is a small private program. Pendleton sits in Eastern Oregon, five hours from Portland. The ballot is genuinely statewide, and no region or classification bracket controls who appears on it.

How the poll works — and what makes it different from a committee award

Dan Brood sets the field each week. Nominations come in by email ([email protected]) or through a tag to @sbliveor on social media, and the ballot opens after he processes the weekend's results. Then it is purely about votes. No panel, no editorial tie-breaker — the player with the most votes when Sunday at 11:59 p.m. Pacific arrives wins. Monday morning he posts the winner.

The vote cap is unlimited, stated directly: "we do not set limits on how many times a fan can vote during the competition." That rule distinguishes this poll from the Oregon Boys and Girls Basketball versions, which shifted to one vote per six hours during the 2024-25 season. Baseball stayed unlimited. One fan can return as many times as they choose through Sunday night. So can any organized group.

What the organizer prohibits is automation. The exact language: "we do not allow votes that are generated by script, macro or other automated means. Athletes who receive votes generated by script, macro or other automated means will be disqualified." The disqualification applies to the athlete — not just the vote count — which makes the rule more consequential than a simple deletion.

Raw vote totals are not published. After each ballot closes, only the winner and the announcement write-up appear. There is no public archive of how many votes a given winner received, which means campaigns here are oriented around share of a competitive field rather than clearing a fixed number. Getting more of Sunday's votes than anyone else is the only target that matters.

Getting organized before Sunday

Two things a team can do before the ballot even opens: get nominated, and start organizing people to vote the moment the poll goes live.

Nominations go to Dan Brood at [email protected] or via @sbliveor on social. The full stat line matters — both games if it was a two-start week, the complete pitching line including hits and walks allowed, the plate game if the player contributed both ways. A nomination with context ("complete-game no-hitter, 18 strikeouts, against [opponent] on [date]") is more likely to make the ballot than a name with no supporting detail.

Once the poll is up, the work shifts to reach. The ballot typically goes live early to mid-week and closes Sunday night — four to five days is the window. With 25–30 nominees on the ballot through early May and the field narrowing only in the final weeks of June, vote concentration matters more than it would in a smaller field. A school community that routes the link through boosters, the team group chat, and the school's social pages on Friday and Saturday, then follows up with a Sunday reminder, is covering most of the window. Because the vote is open and uncapped, every real supporter who returns more than once multiplies the effort. Structured fan-poll vote support exists for exactly this kind of weekly ballot.

The late-season ballot (June, state championship week) runs shorter — 19 nominees in June 2025 versus 30 in May — and the remaining programs tend to be the ones with the deepest playoff runs. That is a smaller field but a more competitive school community on average. The dynamics shift. Early-season weeks have more nominees but potentially less organized opposition; late-season weeks have fewer names but the finalist programs behind them. Both reward the same thing: consistent outreach through Sunday night.

More Oregon contests are indexed at /usa/oregon/, and the full national directory is at /usa/.