MLP 2026 Pre-Draft: The 20-Team Mega Breakdown (Part 1)
We’re calling this the mega breakdown because it features a complete overview of all 20 MLP teams. For those who have not been following along, February 15th marked the close of trade window #1 and the keeper deadline for teams to lock in their players for 2026. The 2026 MLP Draft is scheduled to take place on Friday, February 27th, but it is important to note that it is unlikely that the rosters will be settled after the draft.
New California Black Bears GM, Erik Tice, has reported previously that teams already have trades lined up for trade window #2, which opens after the completion of the draft. The rules prevented a good chunk of teams making trades during the first trade window so a lot of the pre-draft and immediate post-draft analysis will be a little bit of a guessing game. Reading and listening to some of the other commentary out there on the moves, it really feels incomplete without the understanding of what may be locked in behind the scenes between different teams.
It looks like there is going to be an MLP Draft show on March 1st and it sounds like they won’t be announcing the results of the draft until that time. But who the hell knows.
This will be part 1 of the breakdown to keep things at a manageable level for today and we’ll run through the top half of the league based on last year’s standings and the Palm Beach Royals, the league’s new expansion team. Non-playoff teams and challenger promoted teams will be posted in part 2. We’re going in order from most interesting to least interesting teams to us.
To give everyone a breakdown of total numbers, there are 28 vacant starter spots to fill (12 men for 9 teams and 16 women for 13 teams). With all the new signed players, things may not be quite as grim for the bottom teams as they were last year.
St. Louis Shock
Current Roster: Hayden Patriquin, Gabe Tardio Kate Fahey
Key Offseason Move: Dropping Anna Bright
Needs: A left side starting female
Breakdown: In a surprise move, the Shock dropped Anna Bright and we have to expect they will spend big to get her back. With Anna Bright’s keeper price at over $300,000, this may simply be a financial decision to subsidize the cost of getting her back. We did not get to see what teams like the Shock would spend for a player last year, but this is a team flying their players around on their private jet. If they have to spend a few hundred extra grand to get who they want, what does it really matter to them?
Another interesting wrinkle to the Shock is whether they might seek to bid on Jorja Johnson in the draft and then look to trade Fahey. It looks like it could be open season in the draft so we cannot rule out having big spenders like St. Louis going the extra mile in the draft. An underrated aspect of Fahey is that she is a high-end singles player, who does not need a Dreambreaker replacement.
Also, Anna initially expressed her singles days in a Dreambreaker might be over, but we don’t think it is necessarily the case that teams can find a bench female that is so much better as a 4-rally Dreambreaker player. The pressure aspect of a Dreambreaker is underrated and there’s going to be some debate over whether bringing in a marginally to somewhat significantly better singles player cold is better than sticking with your battle tested star player. Would Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan be happy passing the baton if the NBA had a 3-point contest instead of overtime?
Dallas Flash
Current Roster: JW Johnson, Augie Ge, Tyra Black
Key Offseason Move: Dropping Jorja Johnson
Needs: A right side starting female and a male singles specialist
Breakdown: The expectation was that Tyra Black would be dropped due to familial ties, but it is Jorja Johnson that gets the drop over JW and Tyra. Jorja has the slightly higher keeper value to Tyra, but is less than JW, which makes it harder to understand this as a financial subsidizing type of situation. Is there a world where Jorja wants another chance to play outside of her brother in MLP and be the leader of an MLP team? That didn’t work for her in either the first half or second half of 2023, but Jorja is a different player. Maybe she wants to spread her wings?
We’re going to see exactly how these teams feel about contending for a title in this new era of MLP and there has to be a clear plan here for the Flash. Bet on Dallas paying to get her back.
The Flash don’t need a singles specialist but would likely benefit from one for Augie Ge, who is getting better tour singles results more recently. We are also curious to see if Dallas is wanting to find an upgrade for Augie in their #2 men’s spot. Augie has been finding some better results since his gold medal with JW in Daytona to cap off 2025 and it feels like all bets could be off with the way the keeper deadline was handled by teams.
New Jersey 5’s
Current Roster: Will Howells, Noe Khlif, Anna Leigh Waters
Key Offseason Moves: Dropping Meghan Dizon and Mari Humberg
Needs: Right side female and potentially a female singles specialist
Breakdown: Meghan Dizon carried with her a hefty price tag so we probably should have seen this as more of a possibility and apparently the league reverted back to all teams needing to draft their 4 starters before bidding on bench players, which is a memo we had missed until seeing the above exchange with Jake Gelvar this morning.
This looks to be a situation where the 5’s are subsidizing a bid for Dizon in the draft as well as giving themselves the option to go after any of the other women that were dropped. The 5’s have not been shy about spending money and there has to be real potential for them to go after Anna Bright or Jorja Johnson.
Another aspect that makes it difficult to give a proper assessment is we don’t have knowledge of team budgets. This draft is shaping up to be far more interesting than last year’s draft, where it sounds like there was a gentleman’s agreement of sorts for teams not to poach players that had to be dropped. If we don’t see any shake-ups again this year, we’ll be skeptical of more shenanigans amongst owners, but that does not seem likely to be the case this year as teams like the Royals and Ranchers are going to be doing everything they can to compete with the best teams.
Going into this offseason, we thought the 5’s would be thinking hard about moving off Howells and Khlif as their men for 2026. Both Howells and Khlif are still improving, but they were exposed last year as a team without the upside of the men from the Sliders, Shock, Ranchers and even the Flash. A post-draft trade is not out of the question, and it may depend on how the draft goes for the 5’s. Would the Ranchers be willing to part ways with Christian Alshon? What about the Squeeze with Federico Staksrud? There are not a ton of male options available.
Palm Beach Royals
Current Roster: Sofia Sewing; Tina Pisnik, Dekel Bar
Key Offseason Moves: Everything
Needs: A starting male and a female singles specialist
Breakdown: The Palm Beach Royals are being given a pretty generous runway as the league’s only new expansion team in 2026. They signed Sofia Sewing using the “Sofia Sewing Rule” and traded for Tina Pisnik. They had the option to sign one non-rostered male for $80,000 and trade for one rostered male, and ended up with Dekel Bar. The non-rostered male options probably did not warrant the $80,000 price tag and there were rumblings that there would be some unexpected drops from teams, so it made sense the Royals decided to wait until the draft to fill out their second starting male spot.
On the women’s side, the Royals need to have a list of women who can play singles and make sure they get one of them for their bench. It is a non-negotiable by choosing to roster Tina Pisnik, who may be the worst female singles player in MLP. There are a bunch of options available out there, but with all teams having to fill out their starting spots there won’t be as many options available. Genie Bouchard and Judit Castillo are prime options, and we’ll see whether other newer women like Sahra Dennehy and Isabella Dunlap get picked as a starter (Kunimoto is a lock to be a starter so she won’t be an option). Sam Parker is also in the mix to be a bench singles specialist.
We have to expect the Royals will be in the running for one of the top men available and, assuming that is their plan, it may make the most sense for a new team like the Royals to find one of the younger players to build around long-term (i.e. not Dylan Frazier) – someone like a Tama Shimabukuro or Jonathan Truong. Sewing, Pisnik and Bar is a solid, but not a title winning roster immediately, barring the addition of a top 5 male, and it may be worthwhile to take a non-conventional approach to create a winning roster, unless they can trade for one.
Columbus Sliders
Current Roster: Andrei Daescu, CJ Klinger, Parris Todd
Key Offseason Move: Dropping Lea Jansen
Needs: A starting female and potentially a male singles specialist
Breakdown: They won the title last year, but they are not going to run it back. Lots of drama surrounded the team going into the playoffs, which led to the Flash foolishly picking the Sliders as their opponent. However, this is a statement from the Sliders that they don’t want to deal with more drama in 2026.
The Sliders were not shy about spending last year and they spent the full allotment in the 2024 draft, but they are not thought of as a team with the pocketbooks of some of the other top teams. Are they an outside contender to bid for Anna Bright or Jorja Johnson? What about Danni-Elle Townsend? Meghan Dizon is another option, who spent the first part of 2024 with the Sliders.
One other question that comes to mind for us is whether Columbus looks to add a singles specialist with the intention for them to step-in for Andrei Daescu or CJ Klinger. The Sliders were a Dreambreaker monster last year in the playoffs and Daescu as well as Klinger have always played well in Dreambreakers despite not playing singles on tour. The question as to whether you play your very capable, but not elite doubles player in the Dreambreaker, or do you send in the cold, less pressure tested singles bench guy?
Texas Ranchers
Current Roster: Christian Alshon, Eric Oncins, Layne Sleeth*
Key Offseason Moves: Trading away Tina Pisnik and Kaitlyn Christian
Needs: 2 starting women
Breakdown: We have to believe that the Ranchers are going after at least one, if not two, big name women in the draft. Ryan Dawidjan is no longer running the show from what we understand so we’ll be curious how things play out after the new regime shipped out both Kaitlyn Christian and Tina Pisnik.
We continue to think they must have either a plan A or a plan B that involves something other than praying you can bid big to fill out both female spots.
*The Layne Sleeth trade technically won’t complete until trade window #2, but this one is hard to comprehend. It doesn’t make sense for the Ranchers to pay cash for Sleeth, who is not good enough either as a doubles starter or a singles specialist on a contending team. She also is coming off hip surgery and hasn’t played all year. Odd move.
Orlando Squeeze
Current Roster: Federico Staksrud, Lacy Schneemann, Milan Rane
Key Offseason Move: Dropping Dylan Frazier
Needs: Right side male starter
Breakdown: The Squeeze need a reset, but all they did was drop Dylan Frazier. All analysis until after the draft should be caveated with “unless they have a post-draft trade in place”, but it is not a winning strategy to have kept both Rane and Schneemann. That’s not a title contending female combo, if that is Orlando’s goal.
As one of the more invested franchises in MLP, Orlando has been unable to put together a properly competitive squad the past two years. In 2024, they chose Jay Devlliers in the draft, who they were able to trade for Tyson McGuffin due to Tyson’s refusal to play for Utah (ironically, Jay might be the better MLP player currently). Last year, they started with Sam Parker as their #2 female and eventually brought on Milan Rane.
We have also seen problems with Federico Staksrud the past two years not giving his all when he doesn’t feel his team is in the mix. Is Federico a prime trade candidate? Does Orlando already have a deal in place with another team following the draft? Why only drop Dylan when so few men are available? Jack Sock is suddenly a sneaky option for competitive teams with the right infrastructure in place, but he probably doesn’t push anyone closer to championship relevancy either.
They need to shake things up or they will spend another year in mediocre purgatory.
Los Angeles Mad Drops
Current Roster: Ben Johns, Max Freeman, Catherine Parenteau, Jade Kawamoto
Key Offseason Move: Traded Hunter Johnson for Max Freeman
Needs: Female singles specialist
Breakdown: This team boils down to whether Max Freeman makes a significant leap in his play. Pros seem to love Freeman’s ability. Anna Bright talked on her PicklePod appearance recently about Max as a future guy who could team up with someone to beat Ben/Gabe in the future. Freeman is a better player, but the love he gets feels a little reminiscent to back in the day when pros loved Daniel De La Rosa. Tools are one thing, but we need to see the results at a certain point.
We’ll also expect that Catherine Parenteau will play on the left with Max Freeman and she’ll have to get comfortable over there. It’s not Parenteau’s first rodeo on the left in mixed.
As well as the Kawamoto’s have performed in Dreambreakers over the years, the Mad Drops will surely be looking to find an upgrade for Jade in their Dreambreakers.
Brooklyn Pickleball Team
Current Roster: Riley Newman, Jackie Kawamoto, Rachel Rohrabacher, Hannah Blatt
Key Offseason Move: Traded away Dekel Bar for cash
Needs: A starting male and men’s singles specialist
Breakdown: Brooklyn was set to go into the off-season as basically a better version of the Orlando Squeeze, but parted ways with Dekel Bar for cash on the final day of the first trade window. It was an admission from their front office that they did not have a roster that could win it all as constructed. Jackie and Rachel are an elite women’s team, and that’s a good place to start from in a world where top female talent comes at a premium.
Brooklyn’s owner, Al Tylis, has always been hell bent on winning in MLP and we have to think they will be looking to spend money to put together a contender, or they have a post-draft trade in place. Dylan Frazier is now available in the draft, but he would not move the needle for this team. It would be a big surprise if they threw in the towel from a contending standpoint in 2026 and we have to expect more moves are on the horizon, along with adding men’s singles player to their bench.
It won’t get much attention, but we are really surprised Brooklyn kept Hannah Blatt. There are surely going to be better singles options available than Blatt. As we noted with the LA Mad Drops, the Kawamoto’s are pressure performers in Dreambreakers but it would be ideal to have a good singles specialist on the bench to sub in for them in Dreambreakers.
Miami Pickleball Club
Current Roster: Yuta Funemizu, Alix Truong
Key Offseason Moves: Traded away Jay Devilliers, Traded Mya Bui for Alix Truong
Needs: Left side starting male and a starting female
Breakdown: As we noted in a recent article, cash is king in Miami. They already traded Jay Devilliers and Mya Bui for cash. They traded Eric Oncins and Noe Khlif in 2025. How competitive do they care to be in 2026? Miami has been one of the best identifiers of talent over the past couple of years and may have found another quality player from the draft last year in Yuta Funemizu. Miami is always a team to keep a close eye on when it comes to who they draft.
Utah Black Diamonds
Current Roster: Connor Garnett, Allyce Jones, Etta Tuionetoa
Key Offseason Move: Dropped Tyler Loong
Needs: Right side starting male and female singles specialist
Breakdown: The one thing we’ll be keeping an eye on for Utah is whether Etta Tuionetoa is traded after the draft. Her $157,500 keeper cost is a lot of money for an ownership group that has focused more on recouping cash than winning over the past couple of years. Etta is a borderline top 10 female and there are many teams who could use Etta, especially now that she can be subbed out of a Dreambreaker.
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