My Major League Pickleball Pre-Season Power Rankings Versus Final Regular Season Standings

New Jersey’s title-winning team (from L-R Emmrich, Khlif, Johnson, Waters, Howells. Not shown: Rane)

MLP/Pickleball.com

As they say, the Internet lives forever. It is always a risk, putting out a Power Ranking of teams for a shop like Major League Pickleball, where more than half the players on the collective team rosters at the end of the season (121) were either traded or were waiver claims this season (if my record keeping is accurate; it may be more). It’s probably folly to do season-long predictions for teams with this amount of churn. But what’s the fun in that?

So, before we get to the playoffs, here’s a quick navel-gazing look at my initial season power rankings versus how they finished up at season’s end. At the end of the draft in early March, I did a big draft recap and published some initial power rankings. For each team there’s a little context provided as the rank versus finish.

• New Jersey: Re-Season Power Ranked No. 1, Regular Season Finished No. 1. I thought STL could take them, and picked STL in my Week 9 Pick’em contest, but the amazing Orlando event gave NJ a well-earned regular season title.
• St. Louis: Ranked No. 2, finished No.2. The Orlando event final could have gone differently, had Bright/Patriquin won that amazing Mixed match. But it didn’t, so it didn’t. We’ll hopefully get a rematch in NYC in a few week’s time.
• Los Angeles: Ranked No. 5, Finished No.3. I had my doubts about Freeman’s ability to allow LA to be better than 5th going into the season, but a late season trade for Garnett and an interested Ben Johns helped power this team up to 3rd by season’s end.
• Columbus: Ranked No. 4, Finished No.4: They upgraded their winning roster from last year, and they made the finals in 3 of their 5 events this year, but still could only manage 4th. They’ll have to go through Brooklyn, New Jersey, AND St. Louis to defend their 2025 title. That seems like a long shot.
• Brooklyn: Ranked No.3, Finished No.5. I power-ranked Brooklyn 3rd with Frazier, before they flipped him for Alshon, which actually improved their lineup. But injuries killed them: at various points this season they’ve been without Newman (scooter shenanigans), Alshon (birthday parties), and Rohrabacher (scoreboard attacks). Can they get healthy for the quarters and take out Columbus?
• Dallas: Ranked No. 6, Finished No. 6. It seems rather prophetic that Dallas somehow ended up 6th this season, after roller coaster ride their roster has been this season. Their women’s roster has gone from Jorga-Tyra-Parker in 2025 to Callie-Tyra-Parker to start 2026, then after multiple trades they now have Townsend-Truong-Buckner and won two of the five events they played. I dare say, they’re the team nobody in the top 4 wants to see in the quarters right now. Underestimate the Flick Wizard at your peril.
• Palm Beach: Ranked No.8, finished No.7: The Royals parlayed their expansion roster creation advantage into getting Sofia Sewing pre-draft, paying under-market cash rates for Pisnik and Bar, then getting McGuffin in the draft for just $65k. This solid team, augmented with the waiver wire pickup of Diamond, had this team playing well all season. They were one of just two teams (SoCal the other) that did not execute a trade after the draft was done, and the Goldin/Diamond waiver claim was their only transaction. They finished either 4th or 5th in all five events and will be a tough out for a top four seed in Newport Beach. Not bad for a debut season.
• Texas: Ranked No. 7, finished No.8: If you had told me that Texas would have both Alshon and Frazier at some point this season, but then told me that they traded both guys away, I would have guessed they’d be giving up on the season and would be a second division club. Instead they acquired the electric Acevedo, who has paired well with Oncins. They had one bad event (finishing 8th), otherwise they likely would have pipped Palm Beach for 7th.

Just five points separate the next five teams, all of whom won exactly 11 matches this season, just to show how close the playoff race really was.

• Atlanta: Ranked No. 11, Finished No 9. Atlanta remade their ladies team on the fly this season, starting with Christian and Walczak, ending with Irvine and Humberg. One big event in San Diego made their season, giving them 15 of their eventual 36 points. Their matchup with Texas in the round of 16 should be the best tie of the opening weekend.
• SoCal: Ranked 16, Finished No.10: This team was my biggest “miss” of the power rankings, as I did not have faith that their combination of untested youngsters Campbell and MacKinnon would hold their own. After creating their entire roster from scratch on draft day, they stood pat all season and did not make a single trade or waiver claim; the only of the 20 teams to not make a single move this season. The team outplayed my expectations, making two 3rd place matches, but they also bombed out of two events, finishing 5th in their group. An ill-timed injury to Bhatia made them the obvious first-pick opponent in the round of 16, and they will struggle to advance this weekend.
• Las Vegas: Ranked 13th, Finished 11th: I thought Las Vegas would get pipped for the last playoff spot on draft day, having done a bunch of pre-draft trades to break up the team that won Challenger last year. The team more or less played to its capacity this year, did not really have a “bad” event that cost them points, and ended up tied with SoCal with 34 points and 10th place in the standings.
• Chicago: Ranked 11th, Finished 12th: Probably the story of the season; Chicago looked like a relatively “safe” veteran playoff team at the time of the draft, but after 3 events looked lost, so the team sold off, went young, picked up super-Sub AJ Koller … then shocked the league by getting into the 3rd place match in their home event week 8 and winning one of the most clutch MLP events in history to eliminate California in Week 9. They should not be in the playoffs, but here we are.
• California: Ranked 14th, Finished 13th: The roster California had at the end of the draft, which prompted me to rank them 14th, was entirely traded away by the time the season was over as the busy front office of Tice & Miller worked over their team in a valiant attempt to grab the last playoff spot. They had match point on their paddles more than once to secure that 12th spot, but failed to do so. Nonetheless, their roster on March 3rd (Sleeth, Kunimoto, Nelson, Haworth, Braham, Loyd) finished the season as Dennehy, Weil, Ingram, Frazier, Tellez, and Emmrich, a very solid team that probably gets a playoff spot had they been together from the start.

From here, there was a decent gap to the 14th and 15th ranked teams in the standings.

• Orlando: Ranked 10th, Finished 14th: The other major “miss” of my rankings versus finish, for obvious reasons. Their lineup started the season well, with Sock pairing successfully with Fed and two solid 2nd tier women in Rane and Schneemann holding their own, but injuries and a stacked St. Pete event relegated them to a 5th place group showing and the realization that they may be better served cashing in trade assets instead of competing for the 12th spot. So, that’s what they did, and slumped out of the playoffs despite posting a better W/L record (13-13) than the five teams just ahead of them in the standings.
• Miami: Ranked 19th, Finished 15th: They certainly out-performed my guess that they’d be completely horrible, but were well back of a playoff spot. Once again, Miami spent the season finding talent, selling that talent for hundreds of thousands of dollars and looking plucky for a bit. Last year, they managed to play this script into the last playoff spot somehow. This year, it wasn’t to be. However, they certainly made some money this season, getting cash back while trading away Roddy, Alix Truong, Acevedo, Yoshitomi, Powell, Frazier, and Loong. Some estimates put their haul at more than $500k along the way.

The teams ranked 16th-18th were tightly bunched with between 15-17 points.

• Utah: Ranked 12th, Finished 16th. My other big “miss” of the pre-season power rankings. I had Utah just sneaking into the playoffs, mostly relying on the assumption that they were going to play their 2025 roster again while 15yr old draftee Tama Shimabukuro rode the bench. Instead, Tama and Connor slumped to an 8-12 record together in Men’s doubles, and the rest of the doubles partnerships slipped from last year’s playoff form as the youth movement passed this veteran team by. They cashed in Garnett at season’s end after finishing dead last in their final event, the last nail in the coffin of their 2026 season, and may have to think about their roster construction for 2027.
• Florida: Ranked 18th, finished 17th: There were no real surprises here for the penny-pinching Florida team, who had one of the smallest payrolls and finished just about where I thought they would. Their biggest surprise of the season was the dropping of co-owner Travis Rettenmaier, who by all accounts was not exactly “on board” with the move.
• Bay Area: Ranked 17th, finished 18th; Bay Area drafted young, and they played about to expectations, going 5-20 and somehow getting into a 5th place event match at one point this season.

The bottom two teams finished well below even the 18th ranked team Bay Area.

• Phoenix: Ranked 20th, finished 19th. Phoenix started young, then went even younger when they traded away the veteran Irvine, and went just 2-21 for the season. Their two wins? Las Vegas in Week 3 and Florida in Week 7. They also got two wins in the Mid-Season tourney.
• Carolina: ranked 15th, Finished 20th: Why did I think this team would finish 15th on draft day? Probably because I was vastly over-rating the players they started the season with, and then they seemed to spend the rest of the season shuffling the deck chairs. They finish the season going 2-21, with their two wins over Palm Beach in Week 6 (!!) and over Bay Area in Week 1.

All in all though, this wasn’t too bad of a power ranking performance. I got the top 8 exactly right, in a slightly different order, and called 10 of the 12 playoff teams in March.

The MLP playoffs kick off on Friday August 7th 2026 from Dallas.