2026 MLP Weekly Roundup – Columbus Takeaways, Texas Transaction and St. Louis Preview
With the events happening so fast and time being limited for us, we’ll see about trying to do a weekly roundup to serve as a wrap-up from the previous event and a look ahead for the following week’s event. This week, we also had a number of trades and waiver moves, so we’ll go over anything notable from that standpoint as well from our perspective.
1. The 5’s are OK – Overreacting to one weekend’s worth of MLP events is akin to overreacting to one week’s worth of NFL games. The thing about the reaction to the 5’s struggles in Dallas during opening weekend is that the results were not confined to opening weekend. Their men struggled to get wins against better teams in 2025 and the carry over to 2026 is what provided cause for concern.
One weekend does not alleviate all those concerns as they really only faced two top teams, Columbus and St. Louis, going 2-0 against them. Surely, the 5’s are not making personnel decisions on whether they win against the Shock 11-9 or lose to them 11-9, but it has to give their group some breathing room to know that they can find those wins.
It will be interesting to monitor if teams continue to pepper Noe Khlif with the majority of balls in the mixed matchup with Anna Leigh Waters. In our view, the question on whether to go reverse mixed for the distribution of the ball against ALW doesn’t necessarily come down to how good ALW is relative to her partner. The more pertinent question to answer might be how good Noe Khlif is compared to the girl he is straight up against. By feeding Noe Khlif more balls, you are effectively creating a 2 on 1 drill where Noe just has to be better than the girl in front of him.
Even if we say that ALW is equal to or better than Noe as a player, if Noe can hang in the rallies and find enough offensive opportunities at the female in front of him, it could be a difficult proposition for opposing teams to pull this strategy out, especially as Noe gets more accustomed to the mind fuck that is being the guy in mixed seeing the majority of the balls.
The 5’s have a lot of breathing room after winning the second event and it will give them more time to feel out their upgraded roster with Jorja Johnson. They were always going to be top contenders, regardless of whether they changed up their male situation, but it has to be a nice to feel like you can get it done with the status quo.
2. Is St. Louis Feeling the Pressure? – There’s been a lot of discussion on the Shock side of the aisle about trying not to want that MLP championship too badly and take some of the pressure off themselves. Talk is cheap, unfortunately.
As easy as it is to say that you’re going to let go of the pressure and play with freedom, doing it is a whole other thing. If it was easy to take pressure off ourselves simply by not putting pressure on ourselves, we would all do it. It’s not as simple as identifying the problem and addressing it by saying you’re not going to do it.
We’ll remain curious if the heat is already getting turned up on the Shock after faltering in the finals at the first two events. They’ll have a chance at a third event win as they head into their third consecutive event in the softer of the two groups.
The Chaifetz family cares deeply about this St. Louis Shock team and, even if it is now a sunk cost, they paid top dollars to secure Anna Bright as their franchise cornerstone in the 2026 draft. That’s not the type of move that alleviates pressure on an individual or the rest of their roster.
The Shock had looks against the 5’s in both men’s and mixed on the weekend, and the match could have easily swung in a different direction had a couple of key rallies ended up in their favor. But alas, that is not how the games ended up going, and we’ll see how this fiery roster shows out at home, with the pressure dialed up more than they would have hoped heading into this third consecutive event.
3. What is Going On With the Silders Men? CJ and Andrei had a slow start to the 2025 season but, by the time the playoffs rolled around, they were in top form. We are seeing a bit of a similar trend in 2026, except it is more concerning given the number of reps they have as a duo now. At MLP Columbus, they lost to Miami, almost lost to California, lost to Atlanta and lost to the 5’s. Overall, they were 3-3 on the weekend and they are 6-5 overall on the season.
It is a fairly limited sample size, but it is something that will have to be monitored in future events as to whether this could be more than a blip on the radar. The Sliders men should be their safest bet going into most matchups and, if that changes, the Sliders suddenly become more vulnerable than where they appeared to be heading into last weekend.
4. Deep Pockets of the Texas Ranchers – The Ranchers have been a complete mystery for us since the first transaction window opened for the 2026 season. We wrote in February that they were “a complete mystery but may have something up their sleeve” after they traded away Tina Pisnik and Kaitlyn Christian. We thought they had to having something up their sleeve, but all that they ended up doing was paying actual money to make Layne Sleeth a starter and offloaded Christian Alshon to bring in Dylan Frazier after the draft.
We wrote in our Draft Grades that we were “shocked” that Oncins, Frazier, Lea Jansen and Sleeth appeared to be the locked in roster to start the 2026 season. Since the draft, Frazier and Oncins broke up as a PPA duo and the Ranchers had a very expected middling result in the opening Dallas event.
As a result, this past week, they spent what sounds like a large amount of money trading Dylan Frazier to Miami for fast rising star, Nico Acevedo, after only one event together. It is an understandable trade in a vacuum as Acevedo brings big upside in men’s and mixed. Upside that Frazier does not have.
The problem that we see with this situation is that the Ranchers have spent a lot of money without addressing their primary issue, which is a female duo that is not good enough.
We seem to have a very different view on Layne Sleeth than others in the industry. However, regardless of how wrong or right we are on Sleeth, even the more optimistic perspective of her abilities does not make Sleeth/Jansen anywhere near a championship level female combo in MLP.
We had wondered whether Texas was going to be cutting costs after they got rid of Pisnik and Alshon, but it sure appears as though they are still wanting to spend money to put together a contending team. Assuming that is the case, it’s really hard to understand what their plan was going into 2026 and that’s what makes this play to get Acevedo so confounding.
There has clearly been some recognition that their opening day roster wasn’t it, but if they don’t address their female situation, the ceiling of this team will inevitably be capped.
5. MLP St. Louis Preview – MLP very much stacked the teams at the opening season event as the two subsequent events do not feature the same depth of heavy hitter teams in one place. Once again, we have disparity in quality between the two groups as the LA Mad Drops and Brooklyn Pickleball Team will likely be fighting over top spot in Group A while the only other real contender for that top spot in Group B is likely an enigmatic Orlando Squeeze squad.
The biggest story for us going into the St. Louis event is whether the Shock can win their hometown event. They need to get this one as much as any regular season event after failing to capitalize in either of the first two events. It will be a big weight off their collective shoulders if they can find their top level at home and pull out a win.
We’ll see two teams in St. Louis that haven’t played a game yet this season. The newly old revamped Brooklyn roster with Alshon and super singles specialist, Chris Haworth. Utah is a frisky team in Group A and is by no means a gimme win for Brooklyn. Can Brooklyn show early on that they are more than an outside shot contender?
The other team that will make its MLP debut is the SoCal Hard Eights. They are the most interesting team for us of the upside teams given their balance of experience and fresher on the scene players. It’ll be tough sledding with LA, Brooklyn, Utah, Phoenix and a high energy Las Vegas team in their group.
The last item we want to touch on is whether Orlando can build on a very positive first event in Dallas. They felt like they played better than their 7th place finish, but one of the biggest questions about this Orlando team is whether they can keep their energy and focus level high throughout the season. This is a chance for them to make some real noise and they should do no worse than 4th place on paper with a group there for the taking outside of the Shock.
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