MLP Premier Free Agency Draft – Live Blog

It is Draft SZN again in pickleball and, even though we aren’t in the hot seat making decisions for a team anymore, it is still the most enjoyable part of professional pickleball for the two of us.

While MLP continues to struggle with sticking to its own rules for more than 2 days and actually making an event of the draft for fans, they are giving access to the virtual draft room to media people so we figured it was the perfect time to fire up the live blog! Our offseason Premier grades are here for those interested.

As a disclaimer, for some reason, we have to pretend players are not being auctioned off for real money and we have been specifically told to refer to this as “Dynamic Bidding” not an auction and “Free Agency Draft Points” not dollars.

Live Blog

8:45 pm EST – One last thing to note for the day. It appears Genie Bouchard is going to be traded to Phoenix for Meghan Dizon after Phoenix accidentally posted a welcome Genie post on social media prematurely. It is not confirmed but our information should be pretty good on this. It checks out for the 5’s that they will roll with a right sider who can fit into that beta female and #2 mixed role.

Charles Darling is a mad man. Putting together Jack Sock, Tyson McGuffin, Genie Bouchard and Jessie Irvine. Jees, what a world.

2:45 pm EST – Okay, we are all done for today. We have some pickleball to go play. We’ll work to get draft grades together for either Monday or Tuesday. The Challenger draft is tomorrow. Thanks for tuning in y’all! Drafts are fun.

One thing to remember is that teams could have trades in place and that could alter what these rosters look like in a few days. NJ, for example, has to have some move they are going to make.

2:40 pm EST – Yates Johnson to Utah at #45. Thomas Wilson to Mad Drops at #46, which is super interesting because they could have the most info on him being potentially able to play at some point this year.

Craig Johnson to the 5’s at #47 overall. Pesa Teoni another Proton player to Phoenix at #48. Angie Walker to the LA Mad Drops at #49. Ava Ignatowich to Miami at #50. Pierina Imparato to Chicago at #51.

2:30 pm EST – Alex Walker to Phoenix at #41. DJ Young to Dallas at #42, odd personality fit but he can hold up if he’s healthy. Rachel Rettger to Atlanta at #43. Marcela Hones at #44 to Columbus.

2:20 pm EST – Tom Evans and Alli Phillips to Orlando for $7,500 and $7,000 respectively. Alli Phillips makes sense as who knows what Sam Parker is able to do at Premier. Tom Evans might have the most upside left of anyone available, men or women.

Sam Querrey to Premier! Only 2 years too late! It looks like we’re going to start seeing some of these more invested franchises using these bench spots to pick up players that have more value than simply on the court, especially when you can steal players away. Querrey goes to the Atlanta Bouncers for 5,000.

#38 Genie Erokhina to the Black Diamonds. Connor Pardoe must have been listening to his guy, Jim Kloss. She is more competent than a lot of the women that are being picked in front of her but there’s no upside here.

#39 overall Yuta Funemizu the former Soft Tennis champion from Japan goes to Miami for $4,500. He’s been an interesting talent since he came to the US this year. No big results to speak of yet.

#40 Pat Smith to DC. Another mentor type pick. The steal system discourages upside so why not?

2:10 pm EST – Teams are still spending a little bit of money but hard for us to understand why some of these players are going for real bids.

#32 Roscoe Bellamy to Columbus. Seems like a good guy and looks the part. Hasn’t been able to translate anything into real doubles results. He subbed for Columbus last year

#33 Christa Gecheva to NJ for 10,500. So their women are ALW, Genie Bouchard and Christa Gecheva. Moving off Mari instead of Zane considering the prices players went at in this draft. Was this really the plan? This team could be entertaining.

#34 Danna Funaro to NY for 10,500. We know nothing about Funaro. She could be the Hustlers best woman based on that information we have.

2:00 pm EST – Teams have money to spend after a draft that is much cheaper than it was expected to be. Here are the next selections:

#28 overall Erik Lange to St. Louis for 10,000. This likely puts Erik Lange into a coach like-role and he can step-in to hold his own at the Premier level. Great spot for Erik to land.

#29 overall Hannah Blatt to DC for 9,500. From a play standpoint, this is a bit odd for that money at this point in the draft.

#30 overall Blaine Hovenier to SoCal for 10,000. We don’t believe in Hovenier as a long-term asset. SoCal’s roster could be the worst in Premier.

#31 overall NY Hustlers go with Juan Benitez for 10,000. Benitez just won the contract with the UPA in that open tryout.

1:45 pm EST – Texas Ranchers save money on Noe Khlif so they spend a combined 20,000 draft points on their two bench spots. They go with Michael Loyd at #26 overall and Helena Jansen at #27 overall. Helena Jansen is someone a little bit more intriguing than a lot of the women out there.

1:36 pm EST – St. Louis were determined to win the first bid for the bench spots. They were essentially auto-bidding to win and may have budget after getting Noe Khlif for 50K. They outbid Texas and DC, and pick recent UPA signed player Felicity Di Laura. 10,600 points or something like that. Basically no results to speak of. We believe she is the wife (not sister we have corrected this) of Carlos Di Laura. Is this the Anna Bright special?

1:15 pm EST – Carolina goes with Tammy Emmrich at #22 overall so it’s Ben Johns, Collin Johns, Kaitlyn Christian and Tammy Emmrich. How mopey will mopey Ben be this year? Our forecast: very mopey.

SoCal Hard Eights in the mix as all the bids are now coming in at the minimum at #23 and #24 overall. They go with Ivan Jakoviljevic. Another competent and uninspiring selection. Ryan Fu at #24 overall. We are unclear how this stuff works for who gets the next picks but these were SoCal’s.

All starting spots are filled now.

1:10 pm EST – Orlando Squeeze go Samantha Parker at #18 overall and is someone we like of the women. However, she has been playing events and not been seeing any real doubles results, which isn’t the best sign. NY Hustlers at #19 overall go with the Australian UPA signee, Helena Spiridis – she looks like she has a long way to go. They also go with Dominique Schaefer at #21 overall. Unclear why they would spend more than the minimum on Spiridis and Schaefer. Good marketing, we guess.

Miami at #20 overall with Jay Devilliers. Notable that Miami does not go upside as Miami and Johnny Goldberg are not afraid to go there, and they must not see anyone left as worth the upside.

1:00 pm EST – Mya Bui just UPA signed today goes to Miami for 20,000 draft points. Bui is our favorite of the unknown women. She is the only person that really popped for us with limited film and results. It feels like a Johnny Goldberg special. This could be the steal of the draft and Anna Bright already endorsed the pick on X, which is notable.

12:58 pm EST – Interesting strategy from the Hustlers as they spend 70,000 draft points to get Zane Ford at #15 and Donald Young at #16. Neither is an offensive pick and there is upside there, but it’s quite a bit of money to spend in this draft when Noe Khlif is going for 50,000 and none of the top guys went for more than 110,000 draft points. We’ll have to see what they do with the women here.

12:50 pm EST – Texas Ranchers with arguably the best value pick in the draft. They get Noe Khlif for 50,000 draft points. SoCal made an appearance at 40,000 draft points for a bid. Khlif has upside and should fit in really well with Alshon, Etta Wright and Tina Pisnik. We might start to see a bunch of minimum draft point picks from here on out.

12:45 pm EST – Slice outbid Utah for 70,000 and go solid team with Callie Smith. Upside with Freeman and arguable upside with David and Ignatowich. All the Premier women are gone now and it is a crap shoot on that side of things from here on out.

Utah spending some money at #13 overall with 50,000 draft points. They go with Mehvish Safdar who was just UPA signed. Nice to be able to sign the person you know you want. She has limited results but any of the girls picks are much harder to knock at this point with no sure thing available.

12:42 pm EST – Good afternoon to Atlanta as they pick Victoria DiMuzio at #11 overall. What a wild world. People have very quickly fallen in love with her talent but we are far less certain. She is a player we have some familiarity on prior to her playing any PPAs this year and we’ll dive a little more into that in our draft grades. Callie Smith is still out there. Will Utah run it back with her? What about Chicago?

12:38 pm EST – Slice are spending some $$$ and props to them for doing so. They get the #10 pick for 80,000 and go with the James Ignatowich coaching tree in Max Freeman. Things getting frisky in the windy city. Ignatowich, David and Freeman is what they have now.

12:35 pm EST – This is complete insanity as the picks come in fast and furious. After Jimmy Miller’s reporting this morning, the 5’s opt for Genie Bouchard for 90,000 draft points. at #8 overall We can’t even comprehend this. Do the 5’s have something with Genie that they can get her to commit to playing more and practicing now that she is with ALW? Hard to see that happening but she does have some skills. Obviously they didn’t want Vivienne David or Callie Smith.

Vivienne David goes to Slice at #9 overall for 90,000 draft points again. The Slice are spending money and want to put together a competitive team. James Ignatowich and Vivienne David are two depreciating assets they get at a relatively fair cost.

12:30 pm EST – The most interesting pick of the draft so far at #5 with the Chicago Slice and they go with James Ignatowich. This is a little bit surprising as DC has actively chosen to stay away from James Ignatowich and they also chose to go with James over Quang Duong. Phoenix was outbid at this spot by Chicago.

Quang then keeps falling with Jack Sock going to Phoenix, who surprisingly pick Sock over Duong. That was not expected on our end. So it is Tyson McGuffin, Jessie Irvine, Meghan Dizon and Jack Sock. Not sure what that is going to get you but it should be a fascinating experiment.

Quangs fall ends at #7 with the Mad Drops. This team may have been more interesting with Ignatowich and we wonder if teams are starting to feel that Quang’s going to be hitting a plateau.

12:20 pm EST – The Columbus Sliders want to win and they are going for it with Lea Jansen at 110,000 draft points. This is easily one of the better on paper teams in MLP with the limited player pool. Lea Jansen will likely play the left with Parris Todd and CJ Klinger.

DC chooses Riley Newman with the #4 overall pick with 110,000 draft points again. This is not surprising with DC running back half of their 2023 team – Jackie Kawamoto and Riley Newman. This one is less of a sure thing as Riley’s stock has remained relatively steady but it is not going up in the near future it would seem.

12:13 pm EST – Augie Ge goes to the Dallas Flash for 100,000 draft points. Teams aren’t having to spend nearly the money that was thought even as recently as a few weeks ago. Winning breeds spending. one question for Dallas is whether Augie Ge was the right guy in this spot. He probably is given the players available and there has to be little question that they will also be back in contention for another Championship

12:10 pm EST – Kate Fahey goes to St. Louis for 130,000 draft points. The Squeeze and the 5’s were the two previous bids. No shocker here as St. Louis is able to put their team back together and are probably the favorites going into the season. We’ll have to see how the rest of the draft goes.

9:54 am EST – Jimmy Miller reported on X this morning that Genie Bouchard won’t be available for the majority of events this year as she isn’t pleased with the MLP scheduling this year. With the dearth of women in the player pool, Genie has been seen as a higher end female for this draft but this obviously exacerbates the concerns that are already there of her commitment level. She’s talented but she has other things she cares about. Tough stance to take when you’re being paid 7 figures just to show up.

https://twitter.com/jimmymiller_pb/status/1896206406141055049?s=46&t=jF3B0X8OT3pTe6fu82p2GA

1:20 am EST – Apparently players are still getting signed right before the draft. Erik Tice reported that Mehvish Safdar was signed and will be eligible for the draft. Limited results to speak of, but she and her sister were tied 9-9 in game one against Callie Smith and Lucy Kovalova at World’s. They lost 11-9, 11-1