MLP 2025 Power Rankings 2.0

We are about to begin a stretch of 3 straight weeks of MLP tournaments. MLP Austin will be happening on this Memorial Day long weekend as we only see 5 Premier teams in action and all 6 Challenger teams.
It will be a tough road for all the Premier teams with Dallas, New Jersey and Texas in the mix. We’ll likely get a pretty good answer to the question of whether the Orlando Squeeze are contenders or pretenders (spoiler alert: it’s probably pretenders) as well as see how the competent Miami team stacks up against the top end of the field.
The next 3 weekends should feel more like a sports regular season. We get a little bit of a break at the beginning of June and then it is balls to the wall with 8 out of the 9 weekends having MLP events starting at the end of June. That’s a lot of MLP content and we’ll have to see if we get some MLP fatigue setting in towards the middle to end of that stretch of events.
With very little in the way of other competing pro sports going on during that period of time, we are optimistic to see how this regular season plays out. At the same time, there remains a very legitimate argument that MLP is better as more of a one off type of event during the calendar year rather than a standalone format.
We’ll see how often we end up doing power rankings during the season. This will be our first set of power rankings during the season and the key long-term takeaway is perhaps the fact that we have zero change with the topteams to begin the season. It’s hard to see anyone breaking into that top 3 right now but there is lots of season to go.

Power Rankings
1. Dallas Flash (Preseason rank: 1) – They did not face the toughest schedule in their first event but the scorelines were absolutely dominant from the Flash, particularly for their women. We are not moving the Flash out of the #1 spot until they get beat.
2. St. Louis Shock (Preseason rank: 2) – The Shock are 8-0 through 2 events with their only non-regulation win coming against the Brooklyn Pickleball Team. They beat the New Jersey 5’s in the infamous Patriquin-ALW feud from the first event of the season and Kate Fahey/Gabe Tardio are winning matches this year. Look out.
3. New Jersey 5’s (Preseason rank: 3) – The 5’s have a regulation loss against the Shock and have had to go to Dreambreakers to win on two other occasions. Anna Leigh Waters has lost twice already this season in women’s. The 5’s may have known something about Humberg as she has plateaued through the first half of the year, but it’s not going to be an easy road for the 5’s to win a title with Meghan Dizon.
4. Texas Ranchers (Preseason rank: 4) – Texas couldn’t ask for much more to start the season. They did lose to the Columbus Sliders in the first event but their men have been scary in stretches and their women remain rock solid. They remain set in the 4 spot.
5. Columbus Sliders (Preseason rank: 5) – CJ Klinger was sick for the entire Columbus event, which meant he missed a whopping 20% of their entire season (5 out of 25 matches). The Sliders are still at #5 in our power rankings because two of their losses in Orlando were to the 5’s and the Flash, and they were able to get a regulation win over Texas when they had their full roster. CJ Klinger just had the biggest tour win of his life in Atlanta and this team should be good with its full squad when it has to be tested in a Dreambreaker going forward.
6. Brooklyn Pickleball Team (Preseason rank: 6) – Brooklyn gets the nod over Orlando because they beat the Squeeze and they have played two very good teams, the Shock and the 5’s, to Dreambreaker losses. This is still a flawed team that has a flawed Dreambreaker foursome, but they are not going to be an easy out for anyone either.

7. Orlando Squeeze (Preseason rank: 9) – Their level of success has been a surprise but, as we highlighted in our Columbus takeaways, they have had a very friendly schedule. The teams they have beaten that started above them in our preseason power rankings are Columbus, LA and Chicago, but that was with Roscoe Bellamy instead of CJ Klinger and AJ Koller instead of Hunter Johnson. And the Chicago win was in a Dreambreaker. Austin will be a big test and we’ll be surprised if they pass with flying colors.
8. LA Mad Drops (Preseason rank: 7) – Hard to ding the Mad Drops too much when they have played 3 matches on the season without Hunter Johnson. Let’s see how this team does at full capacity.
9. Miami Pickleball Club (Preseason rank: 14) – They have already played 11 matches this season and the 1.45 points per match clip is very respectable. They are somehow doing this when Mya Bui isn’t passing the eye test as a long term propspect but she’s 9-13 overall, which isn’t terrible. If Miami can find one win in Austin, it should probably be seen as a win for them.
10. Chicago Slice (Preseason rank: 8) – We asked before the season if the Chicago Slice might actually be underrated but it turns out they were not underrated at all. With a record of 4-4 and a loss to Tammy Emmrich/Zoey Weil, their women have not been as solid as you would hope for with two legitimate Premier players. Unfortunately, the prayers for realizing the potential upside of Ignatowich, Freeman and David have not been answered through 2 events.
11. Phoenix Flames (Preseason rank: 10) – It is too bad for Jack Sock that he was put on this Phoenix Flames team. While Sock is naturally a guy who wants to have fun, he needs to be in a more serious environment to have any chance at getting the best out of him. It’s a free pass for him to mentally check out when he’s playing with Genie Bouchard and the coach who has a clipboard of chirps for the other team. We’d be curious if anyone has real statistics to back this up, but the eye test says they should be stacking Sock on the right with McGuffin.
12. Atlanta Bouncers (Preseason rank: 11) – The Bouncers are about what we expected them to be. They are better than the worst teams and they’ll be on the bubble of a play-in spot. Victoria DiMuzio looks fine but that’s not going to be enough to vault this team into anything more than fringe play-in contender.
13. New York Hustlers (Preseason rank: 15) – New York has 2 wins on the season, one of those coming against the Carolina C squad. It’s crazy to think that Dominique Schaefer is a significant upgrade over Ling Wei Kong.
14. Utah Black Diamonds (Preseason rank: 13) – Utah has only played 3 matches on the season and they put in Genie Erokhina as their starter over Mehvish Safdar. Erokhina remains an okay player but her ability to hold up against better competition is quite limited. That makes things very tough for Utah compared to where they were by the end of last year with Callie Smith and Alix Truong.
15. SoCal Hard Eights (Preseason rank: 16) – SoCal has only played 3 matches as well and they did find their way into a Dreambreaker loss in one of those. The Roscoe Bellamy pickup might move the needle a little bit for the Hard Eights but it is very unlikely to result in any significant improvement for the team.
16. Carolina Hogs (Preseason rank: 11) – What more is there to say than we already have? This pig pen is one of the most depressing things we have ever seen in pro pickleball.
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