NML’s 2026 MLP Draft Live Blog
Let’s run back the live blog with live draft coverage being announced by MLP the evening before the draft! We have our big board below, which is very much a long-term doubles upside board with singles specialists sprinkled through. Here are the links to our various MLP Draft preview articles if you want to use it to help you follow along today:
Women’s Big Board; Men’s Big Board; Mega Breakdown of Top Teams (Part 1); Mega Breakdown of Bottom Teams (Part 2)
Live Blog
1:55 pm EST – Let’s recap some of the more interesting picks of the bench round. Emma Nelson to California as an upside woman and she could end up starting potentially. Jalina Ingram and Tom Protzek to the Chicago Slice are both interesting as we are generally a little higher on Protzek than consensus it would seem. Florida Smash go with Zoey Weil and we expect she may start for them in doubles. She could be their best doubles female on the roster.
Luc Pham to the Breakers, which means they have picked up Ella Yeh, Len Yang and Pham for the day. There’s a clear direction that Bay Area is going from a franchise building perspective along with Bui. Genie Erokhina rounds out their roster.
Dallas Flash just finding locals in Sam Parker and Ivan J is a bit of a sad state for their roster. The New Jersey 5’s bring on Martin Emmrich as a bench guy, and we are surprised to see AJ Koller goes completely undrafted.
Isabella Dunlap to the Hogs with the final pick of the draft and, who else but Brandon French back to the Hogs in MLP. Dunlap is actually interesting and we expect she will end up starting for that team. She was #11 on our Board.
Alex Crum is an interesting singles specialist pick for Columbus.
12:48 pm EST – The Shock won the first two picks of the bench portion of the draft and went with John Lucian Goins and Elsie Hendershot. We have been super high on Hendershot this year and had her #13 on our women’s board. John Lucian Goins is a super fascinating pick because we have come a little down on him but still like his upside as a singles guy who has shown doubles upside. Much like Miami, we take notice when Anna Bright makes the picks for a team because these are players that can potentially be kept long-term. We’re unclear on whether you can keep more than 4 players next year or if you can keep bench slots too?
12:30 pm EST – One additional comment we want to make is that we shouldn’t say for sure it was a mistake for these teams to drop their women. Al Tylis is out there for Brooklyn as a guy who may have been willing to spend whatever to get a Gabe, Hayden or JW, and the teams had to have known that. It obviously feels like a mistake because of the cost and the fact that Dallas didn’t have the budget to get Jorja. But there is an alternate reality where the men go for a similar price because of similar market scarcity.
12:20 pm EST – That’s it for the starter portion. A super interesting draft and glad they did some kind of a live stream. It sat at around 2,000 live viewers for most of the broadcast, which feels like a really good number. We’re going to check back in here and there with the bench picks to provide some commentary. Thanks for following along with our draft coverage. We love doing this and it’s obvious there is a small but mighty group of people who crave draft content.
12:17 pm EST – California back in the mix winning the bid and running it with Chris Haworth. We wonder if they are going to pick a better doubles player to hopefully get to a Dreambreaker as they now have Dennehy, Kunimoto and Chris Haworth on their roster.
Miami goes in for the minimum bid of $10K and the Johnny Goldberg special is Nico Acevedo. We didn’t know that he was even a UPA signed player. Acevedo was a guy that was previously an upside guy on Goldberg’s radar but that feels like a couple of years ago. Acevedo hasn’t been doing much or playing that much that we have seen recently. Odd to see. For their 2nd woman, they go with Estee Widdershoven, who we had up at #17 on our women’s board, which felt high to us. When Johnny Goldberg makes a pick, we take notice and feel that is somewhat validating to have had her that high. Upside always makes sense for teams like Miami.
Bay Area fills out their roster with Ella Yeh. She was #26 on our board and we had her higher on earlier iterations of our board. Might as well swing for the upside and this isn’t totally shocking.
California has the final pick for the starters and goes with Anouar Braham. We felt there were a bunch of guys in Anouar’s range like Rafa Lenhard, Chris Crouch, Adam Harvey, Connor Mogle, George Rangelov. We didn’t such much difference in them but we probably haven’t watched enough.
12:06 pm EST – Phoenix pairing Judit with Jessie Irinve smells like recency bias for a big random run in Mesa with Genie Erokhina for Judit. There were so many better singles players avaiable with some doubles upside. Bad pick. Sahra Dennehy goes to the Ranchers with the next pick. We continue to believe they have something else up their sleeve but it is Layne Sleeth, Lea Jansen right now. That would be bad if it stays.
Genie Bouchard to the Florida Smash as clearly a play for marketing. Genie is in South Florida some of the time. They have their new home at St. Pete Athletic Center and are hosting an MLP event. This will give them some buzz.
11:57 am EST – Atlanta joins the fold with a $45K bid and Daria Walczak as the pick. Atlanta spends some money for potentially the most mid team in all of MLP. We’ll see how things shake out for them, but hard to understand this way to build a team.
11:55 am EST – Bay Area goes with Len Yang to pair with Pablo Tellez. We like him as our #8 pick even if we don’t know what this team gets you. The Dallas Flash then finally get back in the mix with Callie Smith for $35K. We are very curious if Dallas has bigger plans to either sell their team or buy a different female.
11:48 am EST – SoCal rounds out their roster for $40K with Will MacKinnon. We like the upside but Bhatia and MacKinnon are both guys who should be on the left for long-term building. MacKinnon has been playing the right with Riley Newman and it’s too bad he’s in a situation potentially where he won’t get a chance to grow on the left. An interesting SoCal team and we kind of like it just based on the upside.
11:38 am EST – California gets Kiora Kunimoto for $45K. This is exactly what a team like California needs to do. We really like Kunimoto’s athleticism and thought we could have her higher than #8 on our board. This seems like a mistake for Phoenix not to have gone here with Kuniomoto as they get Cam Chaffin for their 2nd male spot with Jonathan Truong. We like going young in this way and have a veteran with Jessie to guide them.
11:34 am EST – Sneaky interesting from SoCal. $65K for Cailyn Campbell. We like the idea of pairing veteran talent with the young, upside players. They run it back with Cailyn Campbell, which is a solid team with at least. Then come back and get Armaan Bhatia, who was #4 player on our men’s board. They need some more upside with their #2 guy, in our view, to be interesting long term.
11:30 am EST – Tyson McGuffin to the Palm Beach Royals for $65,000. Palm Beach went from interesting, to very blah. Competitive, but not with the best. Armaan Bhatia is still out there.
11:27 am EST – $85K for Meghan Dizon for the Hard Eights. Curious what other plans they have for a team that hasn’t been spending any money and has no roster. This does not seem to be the right way to build your team, but starting with a veteran does make some sense depending on how the rest of the draft goes.
11:20 am EST – Phoenix Flames then go for $85K and they go with Jonathan Truong. So the roster is now Irvine and Jonathan Truong. #1 on our men’s board so we really like the pick in terms of building a real team. We like this. Meghan Dizon is still around in the draft.
11:17 am EST – The bids keep fluctuating and it’s nice to see so many teams care. $125K goes to Utah, which is pretty shocking. Connor Pardoe spending some dough!?!?!? Tama Shimabukuro is the pick. We’ll be curious to see if they trade Garnett as Tama should be on the left. Tama was our #2 player on our men’s big board so we like this if you’re trying to build a real team.
11:12 am EST – Jack Sock to Orlando for $105K. We thought Brooklyn or Orlando were the two landing points for Jack. Orlando needs to upgrade their women but this is a good spot for Jack, if they can keep him focused and Fed remains engaged. Interestingly, none of the young guns have been selected and that has to come at some point.
11:08 am EST – Brooklyn in the mix for $170K securing the pick and we now have guys so the cost of the picks has gone up. They select Dylan Frazier. Seems very odd to trade Dekel to then select Dylan Frazier. The perfectly non-competitive, competitive playoff team.
11:04 am EST – It was noted on the draft but Dallas has not been in the mix for any of these picks. Maybe their backup plan is to trade their team and there are top players available through trade. Again, we can’t grade these selections until we see what happens in the post-draft trade window. Or Dallas buys another woman after the draft?
11:02 am EST – Chicago Slice go back-to-back and get the #6 pick for $90K, a little more than the previous selection. The Slice go with Mari Humberg and we don’t really understand this. Humberg is going to have to play the left, which is where Jamie Wei has been playing and she needs to be on the left in mixed. Confusing stuff from Chicago who have created a very mid team.
10:59 am EST – Now we are rolling in fast and furios with the picks. $105K to Texas and they go with Lea Jansen. We remain even more confused by Texas’s decisions this offseason. They weren’t in the mix for the top picks and we are just surprised that this is how they feel they are going to get closer to a title. The Chicago Slice get the #5 pick for $75,000 and are rolling with Jamie Wei. We are very intrigued with the upside on Jamie. She was #6 on our women’s board. Swinging with some upside at least makes sense for Chicago.
10:52 am EST – This is really where the draft gets interesting. $180K for the third pick goes to Columbus. They clearly had a plan and went with Danni-Elle Townsend. She was our #3 female on the board. The Klinger’s have ties to Australia and keep a close eye on things down there. Super fascinating team and she can play the left with CJ. They probably want a singles specialist for Townsend on their roster. This is a quality upside play and we love that they are going for it rather than a known commodity.
10:47 am EST – Jorja Johnson goes to the 5’s. No messing around early for the 2nd pick as the bidding got to $750K very quickly after the market got set with pick #1. Again, a clear misjudgement to drop women for these top teams from a money perspective and they are having to bid far more than they must have expected. The bid ended up with the 5’s for $800K. A huge misstep for the Dallas Flash, who were the other team in the mix for this pick. This might be why social media teams shouldn’t be bickering with talking heads when they really don’t know what’s going on.
10:41 am EST – The Shock win the top bid for $1.23 million. It sounds like a lot of money but this is a team that literally flies their players around on PJ’s. It’s a drop in the bucket for them. Anna Bright is back with the Shock with the first pick. It is very cool to see there are still teams that care this much about MLP. Now the question is whether anyone wants to bid with the 5’s for Jorja Johnson.
10:35 am EST – What a crazy start to the draft. We are over $1 million for the first pick and it is clear these teams dropping their top women made a mistake because there aren’t teams needing guys that would have been bidding this much for some version of Hayden, JW and Gabe because the 5’s wouldn’t have been in that mix. Really hard to know what’s going on but we’ll be very curious to see what Jorja Johnson goes for. This is only for AB!
10:31 am EST – Shock, Sliders and 5’s have all been in the bidding process for the first pick. We can’t see the bidding process unfortunately but it’s crazy that we are at $990K without a pick yet. Sliders have dropped out apparently. We’ll update when the first pick comes.
10:12 am EST – It’s problematic we are still waiting for the draft to start, but knowing how these drafts go they are probably not organized to start so they are filling time. All we can really do is watch the live stream numbers (currently over 1,300!) and the (fake?) smoke behind Dave Fleming on the broadcast!
10:03 am EST – The draft has not started yet and there are 859 people in the live stream on YouTube with an old school live chat…and counting.
9:53 am EST – One important thing to remember about this draft is that teams have trades in place. We don’t know what those trades are, but the analysis is going to be incomplete post draft until the trade window opens again. We may hold off on giving draft grades until we see how all the trades shake out. 
9:15 am EST – Good thing MLP is starting their draft at 7am PT on the west coast because it means that we can do some live blogging of the draft before our workday begins for about an hour and a half. We’ll provide some updates after that as well but the first hour and a half will be thorough! No better time for a pro sports draft to get as much coverage as possible.
