Major League Pickleball 2026 Draft Running Diary

The 2026 Major League Pickleball (MLP) auction draft was held earlier today on 2/27/26. As I’ve done in the past (links to 2025’s running diary and 2024’s draft recap) here’s a running diary from the event, with me capturing thoughts in real-time as the draft unfolded. I tried to live tweet this content as well to my twitter feed (X handle: toddeboss) but the action was just too fast to both capture the below thoughts and keep up with twitter.

MLP decided last minute to host a live show on its YouTube page for the draft, something the community has been clamoring for. If that “live” link fails go to their main YouTube page for a replay. All their picks will be published at this running Draft Blog page, which also has solid links to other bits of useful information, like current rosters, Keeper drop lists, and other resources.

Here’s the MLP draft content I’ve published so far in this cycle:

I also posted a fun interview with 2025’s “super-sub” AJ Koller, talking about his on-site assassin role over the last two years and his hopes to catch on full time with a team for 2026. (Spoiler alert; he was not picked up in the 2026 draft, and will return to possible super-sub duties)

This draft occurred on Friday, 2/27/26 starting at 10am EST.

8:00 EST: I wake up to an inbox message from MLP announcing their YouTube live show, which is great to see, and something the community has been clamoring for. I spend the next hour and a half prepping for the draft, writing the preview above, arguing with people on Twitter … you know, the modern day “first cup of coffee” in our world.
9:30 EST: The media gets to watch the draft unfold on the draft portal via a Zoom call, where we have media-specific meeting along with MLP’s media head Jay Moskowitz to watch the bidding in real-time. This is a nice feature added last year that certainly allows us to write more educated stories AND to do live-reactions. Thanks to the MLP for maintaining this for us.
9:45 EST: the big question that will be answered pretty quickly right in the first couple of picks is simple: Are St. Louis and Dallas going to just add back their leading females (Anna Bright and Jorja Johnson respectively), or are we going to see a massive surprise in the draft with one of the other opportunistic teams bidding up the first couple of picks to try to “steal” these ladies away from their homes the last couple of years? These decisions will basically define how the 2026 season will go for all the top teams in the league.
9:45 EST: As we talk about how much money these players are about to go for, here’s a fun little tidbit for you: the following players cost their teams exactly $0 to “keep” for 2026: Jaume Martinez Vich, Layne Sleeth, Travis Rettenmaier, Martina Frantova, Chao Yi Wang, Millie Rane, and Eric Oncins. None cost any money because all were initially picked up as Challenger players or on waivers. Other super-cheap keepers included Alix Truong (just $500), Blaine Hovenier ($1000), Liz Truluck ($1000k), and perhaps the best value player in the entire league: Columbus’ CJ Klinger at just $1000k. Klinger probably would go for 100x that in the draft.
9:57 EST: hopped into the video feed; none other than Anna Bright is on the call so that she can do some quick interviews post drafting, presuming she’s being drafted pretty early.
10:00 EST: Per the MLP media team, we’re using #MLP2026Draft as the social media hash tags. Hopefully we get momentum with the pundits on IG and X to use that tag.
10:00 EST: a reminder; in the first round the minimum bids are $10k, then $5k increments. Each new pick resets the count-down clock to 30 seconds, so these bids could take a while.
10:10: On the call, the media pundits make predictions on the price tag for the first pick: I say $500k, Nico the Lefty says half of Johns’ keeper cost (which is $420k), Kloss said $525k. Anna Bright: no comment 🙂
10:15: the first pick starts, and some weird teams are bidding. Miami, California? These have to be those GMs either testing their bid buttons or just trolling their fellow teams, because there’s no way they’re spending even in the $200k range. Within a couple minutes, the bidding gets over $300k. New Jersey and St. Louis push the bidding into the $330k range within a few minutes, well past the top price paid last year.
10:18: Three minutes into the first pick and we’re above $350k, with NJ, STL, and then Columbus all participating. Columbus puts it above $400k for the first time. It’s a three-team race, and all three are chasing presumably the same player: Anna Bright.
10:23: Columbus puts it at $500k. They’re in this to win it. Then, a minute later New Jersey does a huge jump to $600k. Now it seems down to both STL and NJ. Columbus back and pushes it to $650k. This is now more than Bright went for in 2024 ($590k).
10:27: Wow: New Jersey pushed it to $700k. This is now officially more than what Anna Leigh Waters went for in 2024, and is a new record for females in MLP. STL quickly counters with $725. The two power houses continue to push the bidding up, often getting to 2-3 seconds remaining in the cycle before pushing the bid and resetting the clock.
10:31: STL hit 850k, making her the most expensive player ever, beating Ben Johns’ 2024 price, then immediately NJ pushed it to $990k. STL not backing down, and pushes it to over a $1M.
10:38: the two teams continue to push each other up in $5k increments, but NJ finally relents. STL wins the bidding at $1.23M … and picks Anna Bright. The first pick takes more than 20 minutes to decide.

Quick thoughts: did STL make a mistake dropping AB instead of one of their men? I’m not sure they did, even if it cost them more than $1M to get him back. That’s because there were really not that many marquee men available, and if someone of the Tardio/Patriquin hit the market, there’d be a similar bidding war but involving different teams.

10:39: the next round starts immediately … we’re one pick in of 66 and it took nearly a half hour. Phoenix is involved early, surprisingly. But NJ pops up with a $325k bid. Dallas finally pops up; clearly they’re bidding to retain the services of Jorja Johnson and are going to get pushed by NJ as well.

Quick comments from Anna Bright as the bidding drones on for the No. 2 pick: “I feel really depleted; my adrenaline was really high 10 minutes in, but I crashed the longer it went. At this price, There’s more pressure to play well, but I can’t really think about it.” Anna also says that she had a preference: she never wanted to leave the Shock. So, today worked out well for Bright, and St. Louis, and the league, who will get a $1.23M check from St. Louis into their bank account.

10:45: NJ blows everyone away, including Dallas, and wins the second pick pretty quickly with an $800k bid and takes Jorja Johnson. This is a league-altering move; NJ is upgrading from Humberg/Dizon for the last two years to arguable the 3rd or 4th best female in the sport, and I think are immediate league favorites in 2026. Dallas is now left scrambling; they’re the kid left out of the musical chairs game, and they go quiet for some time afterwards.
10:49: Columbus and Texas were mixing it up for the #3 pick, but Columbus wins it for $180k and picks the Australian Danni-Elle Townsend. An interesting pick; Columbus replaces Lea Jansen with a relative unknown to the US market in Townsend. If she can gel with Parris Todd and Andrei Daescu, they’ll be right back in the 2026 title mix.
10:52: the #4 pick has some surprising teams in the bidding, including SoCal and California, two teams who spent practically nothing last year.
10:54: Texas wins the pick for $105k, and picks Lea Jansen. The media conference call discusses the “fit” with Jansen and Alshon on the same team now, but certainly Texas picked up one of the best available women remaining. Where was Dallas in this bidding? They’ve got a gaping hole now, and barely participated in the bidding for the top remaining female.
10:57: Chicago surprisingly wins the 5th pick for just $75k, and picks Ting Chi Wei, another brand-new PPA signing from overseas with a ton of solid results in both Asia and Australian events. That could be a real value pick.
11:00: Chicago goes back to back, something they also did in the 2025 draft, and grabs their second female in Mari Humberg. A solid pick at No. 6.
11:02: The 7th pick is already double the 6th pick, interestingly, and we’re seeing the teams shooting for a Male player now getting in on the action. Palm Beach, Orlando, Brooklyn now in on the bidding. The pick is eventually won for $170k by Brooklyn, who pick the BPA male in Dylan Frazier. My theory that perhaps Brooklyn was going to sit tight and grab their super-sub Koller goes for naught.
11:08: the 8th pick goes to Orlando for $105k, who picks Jack Sock to pair with Federico Staksrud, and immediately creates a Men’s doubles team with two left-side players. There’s a big discrepancy on opinions of Sock in the media room, but I’ll point out the obvious: Sock was drafted for $550k in 2024, and was dropped. In 2025 Phoenix paid $100k for him, and dropped him. Now its 2026 and he’s gone for another big figure. He owns exactly one Doubles medal in his PPA career; a mixed gold he got playing alongside ALW in a depleted NC event.
11:14: another shocker: Utah of all teams, which spent the minimum in the 2024 draft and not a ton more in 2025 … wins the 9th pick for an astounding $125k and picks the 14yr old Tama Shimabukuro. Shimabukuro certainly has high-visibility singles results, but has almost no doubles results.
11:16: Phoenix quickly wins the 10th pick and takes Jonathan Truong for just $85k. Interestingly, my No. 2 male on the board (Tyson McGuffin) remains available.
11:20: SoCal surprises the league by winning the 11th for 85k and grabs Meghan Dizon, easily the best available female. What is Dallas doing? Dallas is now shut out of essentially all the top available women, and may now just punt the draft down to the end of the round and try for an unknown or youngster, or perhaps depend on trade somewhere to fill out the roster.
11:27: Palm Beach pops up, wins the 12th pick for $65k, and takes Tyson McGuffin. that’s a solid pairing; McGuffin with Bar, and suddenly Palm Beach looks like a very competent team year one. Playoff team.
11:30: SoCal pops up again and nabs teenager Cailyn Campbell with the 13th pick, who they picked up on waivers last year and clearly liked.
11:32: SoCal wins again, for just $40k, and nabs Armaan Bhatia with the 14th pick. SoCal now has nabbed three very solid players for less than what Orlando paid for Frazier.
11:34: California wins the 15th pick for $40k and continues the youth movement, picking Hawaiian teenager Kiora Kunimoto.
11:40: Phoenix nabs another youngster in Cam Chaffin for $35k with pick No. 16, pairing him with Truong. The draft software initially posted the wrong name so we paused for a second here.
11:46: after a quick break, SoCal wins the next spot and picks another youngster in Will MacKinnon. They are clearly not concerned with his recent run of form playing alongside Riley Newman.
11:48: Bay Area picks Len Yang, to pair with Pablo Tellez in a curious pick. There’s a ton of veteran talent on the board right now, and the youth movement is clearly on in the league.
11:51: Dallas finally pokes their head back up out of their gopher hole and nabs the 19th pick for $50k, and picks the veteran Callie Smith. Well, this is a competent pick for sure. Will she actually play for Dallas, or is this trade bait for them? Dallas has taken a huge step back, after missing out for both Bright and Jorja.
11:59: Phoenix pops back up for $45k and grabs one of the better remaining females in Judit Castillo. We’re starting to get into the very end of the starter draft and should start seeing some quicker movement.
12:02: Texas finally grabs their second female starter and goes international, picking Australian Sahra Dennehy. I like this pick, and if Texas has done their homework they may like that pick too.
12:03: Pick No. 23 goes to Florida for just $20k and they pick Genie Bouchard, who immediately becomes a “singles specialist” bench player trade bait to one of the top teams that may want to replace their doubles-specialist starter. It’s also possible that Rettenmaier grabbed his former Tennis-world friend Bouchard.
12:04: I’d expect the rest of the first round to go fast, with the teams waiting to this point getting a bunch of $10k-$20k spots.
12:15: The rest of the round featured the bottom-spending teams California and Miami primarily filling out their rosters with minimum bid players. Haworth got a reunion with California, Miami picked a couple of lesser known players in Acevedo and Yeh.
12:15: Mr. Irrelevant for the first phase of the draft turns out to be California picking one Mohamed Anouar Braham for the $10k minimum. Amazingly, Miller didn’t take this opportunity to pick up his podcast co-host Tyler Loong, who falls through the bench draft portion of the draft.

Some quick observations: wow, the youth/international movement is on. There was a slew of veteran starters from last year left on the board, including Loong, Koller, Scarpa, Loyd, French, Hewett, Emmrich, and Young on the men’s side. Nearly all the women I identified on my BPA board were picked in the starter phase; not surprising given the relative lack of depth in the women’s game.

The Bench draft phase immediately followed, and over the next couple of hours 38 players got picked up to fill the bench slots of the 20 teams. Instead of going through name by name, here’s some high lights. The full list of drafted players is at this MLP link.

Like they did in 2025, STL doesn’t mess around in the Bench player draft portion and grabs the first two spots to net their bench: they get John Lucian Goins and Elsie Hendershot, taking the youth movement to the extreme. Hendershot is just 12 (twelve!) years old.
Donald Young to Atlanta makes sense: that’s where he lives.
The LA Mad drops take singles specialist Gabriel Joseph; interesting pick. Would he slot into DreamBreakers to replace Freeman?
Phoenix grabs Wyatt Stone as their bench male, but he could press for starting time with the two younger members of that team. Later on they pick teenager Alexa Schull, who just signed and full of upside.
Florida picks up Zoey Weil and Chris Crouch as two solid younger upside picks.
Columbus gets Alex Crum as their bench male; that’s a solid singles specialist consideration, especially given that neither of their starting men regularly play singles.
Utah’s bench male? Tyler Loong for $2,000. Something tells me Loong is going to be starting and Utah played us for a gambit here.
Both Emmrich’s get picked up; Martin to the 5’s and Tammy to Palm Beach.
Palm Beach finishes their roster with Grayson Goldin, who clearly fell due to his recent medical issues.
Las Vegas, who didn’t draft in the starter phase, got their one pick in Braden Jacobson.
Carolina, whose roster construction errors during the trade window left them shut out of the drafting … waited until the very last two picks to spend the minimum amount possible and grabbed Brandon French and Aussie Isabella Dunlap.

That’s the 2026 draft. We’ll digest the draft, put players on rosters, and then do some draft analysis next week, along with identifying draft snubs and surprises. Plus, we’ll do the requisite “Draft Grades” so that all of us can see our grades side by side for future grade-shaming.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/toddboss/2026/02/27/major-league-pickleball-2026-draft-running-diary/