Our Best of the Ballparks fan vote continues, as the competition begins for venues in the four MLB Partner Leagues, based on the result of last year’s voting.
This vote covers the four MLB Partner Leagues—the Frontier League, American Association, Atlantic League and Pioneer League. In addition, we’re including Jimmy John’s Field of the United Shore Professional Baseball League.
There are 49 total ballparks under this classification, but this year’s poll covers the top 32, as determined by last year’s Best of the Ballparks vote. We’ve substituted Hinchliffe Stadium, new home of the New Jersey Jackals, for Yogi Berra Stadium, the team’s former home. (Harry Grove Stadium, home of the Spire City Ghost Hounds, will be featured in our MLB Summer Collegiate vote, while the Empire State Greys is a Frontier League road team.) While this means there are some fine MLB Partner League ballparks left out of this year’s vote, launching a first round with 16 byes doesn’t really work when it comes to drumming up fan interest.
We know from marketing stats that a third of our readers work in the baseball industry, so we’re tapping into that collective expertise. And we know from our research that a third of our readers sell to the baseball industry, so that expertise will be valuable as well. The remaining third–fans, media, government–will certainly have a different view on things as well. We can’t wait to see what our readers–whom we consider to be the smartest folks in baseball–say about the best of the ballparks.
Here’s our ranking of Single-A ballparks. This was an extremely difficult list to seed: Honestly, there’s not a lot of difference between most of the ballparks in this competition, and there are plenty of arguments for most of these ballparks deserving a higher rating. Results of last year’s vote also played a part in our seedings, as well as improvements entering this season. Occupying the top spot is The Diamond, home of the Lake Elsinore Storm and last year’s champion, followed by 2022’s runner-up, Atrium Health Ballpark (Kannapolis Cannon Ballers). We don’t expect the voting to follow our seedings: our readers can be independent. and they share a love of ballparks and the fan experience. This is a very difficult bracket to seed.
Some things to note. First, you are allowed to vote multiple times, but you can only vote once per day. Second, you don’t need to fill out a full slate: partially filled lineups will count. A running tally of the vote will be presented at the bottom of this page in the form of brackets. Vote below:
Here is the schedule for all the 2023 Best of the Ballparks fan votes:
- Grapefruit League, Completed (winner: Publix Field at Joker Marchant Stadium)
- Cactus League, Completed (winner: Camelback Ranch-Glendale)
- College Baseball, Completed (Larry H. Miller Field)
- MLB, Completed (winner: PNC Park)
- Triple-A, Completed (winner: Polar Park)
- Double-A, Now-May 27 (winner: Delta Dental Stadium)
- High-A, Completed (winner: Four Winds Field)
- MLB Partner Leagues, Now-July 31
- Single-A, Completed (winner: The Diamond)
- Summer Collegiate, July 16-Aug. 1
- MLB Summer Collegiate, July 15-July 28
