More Reactions to MLP Moves – Lions Shake Things Up

Screw NBA free agency. This is the real off-season as a flurry of moves were announced this morning for MLP. We had the first that happened a couple of days ago with Maggie Brascia being exchanged for Jackie Kawamoto, but clearly a lot of teams are unafraid to make some moves. Let’s give some quick hit thoughts on the transactions announced on the MLP site this morning. For clarity, MLP is using the term “waived” instead of “dropped” for players who are dropped.

Lions trade Corrine Carr to Mad Drops for Oliva McMillan. Lions waive Bobbi Oshiro.

On the one hand, it was not surprising to see something happen to Corrine Carr. On the other hand, the trade makes no sense combined with the second move to waive Oshiro. The early takeaway for MLP is that personal relationships are playing far too big a part in personnel moves as they did to a degree in the first iteration of MLP. First the Brascia’s, and now Carr is traded to Mad Drops where she will be teamed up with Adam Stone yet again. Carr and McMillan could be seen as either a slight upgrade, downgrade or neutral move for either team depending on your perspective. We see it as a slight downgrade given how McMIllan has played over the past month or so. 

The Oshiro move is completely baffling though. Sure, Oshiro was drafted a little too high but what is your replacement? Is there another move coming here? What does this accomplish for your team? Oshiro is better than any of the women in the replacement pool by a wide margin. We thought it was hard to make sense of the Maggie Brascia move for the Jackrabbits but this is much more difficult to understand. 

Teams still have the end of the day (July 4rd) to waive players and there have to be teams now considering whether to drop their 2nd women to take Oshiro on – the Bus are the first team that come to mind as Oshiro would pair very well with Stratman’s power. Team Clean would be an option to drop Regina Franco too, but that fit is not as strong with Michelle Esquivel. Dropping Oshiro opens the door for a number of teams who may have felt like they were stuck.  

Tough luck for Olivia McMillan too. The Lions are not in a good spot and it will be fascinating to see what they think an upgrade on Oshiro is from that replacement pool. 

Ranchers drop Austin Gridley and ATX Pickleballers drop Altaf Merchant

After trading for Jackie Kawamoto, the Ranchers made the move to drop Austin Gridley as well, which is a pretty big shakeup for their team overall. The Gridley move is a bit of a surprise. He’s a great men’s doubles fit next to DJ Young and is a solid mixed player. It’s unclear what the clear upgrade for them is. Although, it is something to consider whether overall team chemistry has played a part in this equation. From a pure replacement perspective, the men’s player pool is a lot deeper but getting an actual upgrade on Gridley is tough to see. Options we see out there for replacements are Stefan Auvergne and Hayden Patriquin. We wouldn’t be shocked to see Mario Barrientos be a replacement seeing as he is good buddies with DJ Young for the time being – Barrientos would be an odd choice from a player standpoint as he is essentially a poor man’s Austin Gridley at this point. 

Despite their strong showing in season 1, ATX drops Altaf Merchant. This one makes the most sense of today’s 3 transaction announcements. The reason why we grouped the Ranchers and ATX moves together in one heading is that Austin Gridley seems like he would be a very good fit on ATX. His men’s doubles game pairs nicely next to Frazier and he would form a better mixed team with Sarah Ansboury. There is some concern from a chemistry standpoint taking away Merchant as suddenly you have a generally low energy team with Frazier, Jade Kawamoto and Sarah Ansboury. Adding Gridley to the mix doesn’t add to what may be needed from a chemistry standpoint but it’s also quite difficult to find a true, high energy guy in that replacement pool. You have to take the opportunities when they come from a talent perspective in this case though. 

There are almost certainly going to be more moves to come down, including from teams who didn’t expect certain players to be waived and suddenly become available.

Agree or disagree? Let us know in the comments below or email us at nmlpickleball@gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook too!

16 thoughts on “More Reactions to MLP Moves – Lions Shake Things Up

  • July 3, 2022 at 12:01 pm
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    I agree that ATX would be a good fit for Gridley. How about Hard Eights dropping Cincola for Gridley? Gridley and Barr have played well in MXD. I wonder if Chuck Taylor knows of an available Utah female player who will be available to replace Oshira and maybe that influenced the waiver. Or maybe Oshiro just doesn’t have enough experience in MXD for this format. MXD puts a heavy demand on partners working well together.

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    • July 3, 2022 at 12:31 pm
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      Hard 8s would do well to take Gridley. He has played a lot with Barr and is a better men’s fit with Andrei. Chuck Taylor may be pushing for Etta and she is a legit option, but why drop your #1 female and not Corrine. It’s clear they were not happy with Bobbi but the way they went about the change will not be an upgrade almost certainly

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      • July 3, 2022 at 2:47 pm
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        I wonder if Corrine has a lot more pull within the PB community given her legacy within the sport. Probably easier to cut Oshiro than Corrine. Though I’ve seen them play against each other and Oshiro is the better player right now

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        • July 3, 2022 at 4:27 pm
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          That’s an interesting thought. Seems like relationships are playing a big part right now

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  • July 3, 2022 at 2:20 pm
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    How much $$ for a team. I’ll fix this mess myself.

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    • July 3, 2022 at 7:02 pm
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      Joking aside, it’d be so cool if there were some way for people to buy a small stake in a team and get some (proportional) vote on things like trades. Like crowd-sourced fantasy where you have a financial stake. Traditional betting doesn’t cut it because, as we’re seeing, teams sometimes put relationships above talent.

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  • July 3, 2022 at 3:08 pm
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    Thank you for the information and opinion. I don’t know enough about the players except by name. I do really enjoy your commentary though so keep up the great work and thanks again for your time.

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  • July 3, 2022 at 6:11 pm
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    Gridley went 1-2 in doubles with DJ Young. Gridley went 1-2 with Anna Bright in mixed. Further, Gridley is arguably the worst singles player of everyone there, including active players, alternates, team owners, and refs. The chances Gridley gets picked up are close to 0, unless his coach buys a minority stake in a team.

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    • July 3, 2022 at 9:23 pm
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      Haha, I love your commentary. I agree Gridley was horrible in singles but not sure if he would be worse than the owners. I think a player has to have some ability in singles in the MLP format; to have zero means you are a liability and it cost the Ranchers.

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      • July 3, 2022 at 11:35 pm
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        Gridley has enough ability in singles to justify his place. Again, these are a few points in a couple of matches

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    • July 3, 2022 at 11:09 pm
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      Gridley only played twice with Anna. He played with Maggie 3rd match. But we can’t use records in these quick rally scoring games to 21 as any true indicator of future results. It’s such a small sample size

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  • July 4, 2022 at 6:02 pm
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    You are falling down on the job with keeping us informed. I just noticed the draft pool list was updated July 2nd. I honestly can’t tell who the new women are. I did notice a few new men names. I guess it’ll be updated again tonight.

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    • July 4, 2022 at 6:22 pm
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      We did put it on our Instagram story Jan! No post though

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  • July 7, 2022 at 8:53 am
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    i thought the fit with DJ was not good at all…lot’s of love here for AG! But I have a simple question for you. why was he not picked up by any of the other teams?

    Reply

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