St. Louis paid well to reunite Kate Fahey (L) and Anna Bright (R) for the 2026 season. Will it pay off?
MLP
In the first post-merger MLP dispersal draft in April 2024, the twelve teams that bid their way into the initial Premier League had to abide by a salary cap in the draft, and the total value of their four picks could not exceed $1M dollars (or “points” as they were referred to at the time in an attempt to obfuscate the amount of “real” money owners were being asked to contribute).
As soon as the draft was over, Tyson McGuffin (initially drafted by Utah for $290k) demanded a trade, and the team flipped him to Orlando for Jay Devilliers (who Orlando paid just $135k for). Even though Orlando sent back some cash, suddenly the Squeeze had an immediate advantage: their roster was “worth" more than the salary cap dictated just a week prior. With such a small player pool and such small roster sizes, it was impossible to force the two teams to find exact trade partners to make the deal work under the $1M salary cap, so the league had little choice but to accept the deal and give Orlando an oversized roster advantage.
More trades occurred over the years as some teams chose not to pay the renewal fees for players, and rosters quickly became unbalanced. Ben Johns, the most expensive player in the original dispersal draft at an initial $840k acquisition figure (and thus a $420k renewal figure) was traded from Carolina to the LA Mad Drops and instantly rocketed that roster well over the original $1M limit. And, thus started the inevitable progression to where we are in the league today: no salary caps, no limits on the amount spent in the draft, and some pretty significant payroll differences from the top of the league to the bottom of the league.
I power ranked the 20 teams just after the 2026 draft earlier this year, and have now adjusted those ranks given the slew of transactions we’ve seen since. However, when I linked up the keeper fees and draft dollar outlays of the 20 teams and did some XLS work, there were some pretty clear patterns that emerged; there’s almost a direct correlation between a team’s payroll and their power rank, from the best projected teams to the worst.
You may be reading this and saying to yourself, “duh, obviously,” but I still thought it was an interesting topic to detail, plus explain why there are a few outlier teams who seem to break the mold. There’s also some very distinct “tiers” for teams in the 2026 season that are laid bare when power ranking the current rosters and comparing them to their current roster outlay.
At the very least, this data should be something for the league to consider moving forward, as it has become more than clear that there are teams who are clearly trying in MLP, teams who are just getting by, and teams who are not attempting to compete at all.
Note: this analysis was all done prior to the 5/15/26 trade between Dallas and Carolina, where Angie Walker and Samantha Parker swap teams. I do not think this trade changes any of the rankings, but the payroll figures may not be entirely accurate at this point.
First, let’s detail how I arrived at my current power rankings. I individually ranked the Men’s Doubles players, Women’s Doubles players, the Singles players per team, then came up with a weighted average to arrive at the initial overall power ranking. I did not try to add in Mixed doubles rankings, instead trusting that ranking the overall quality of the doubles players should be enough. I then weighted the scores by giving the two doubles components equal weights and then adding a 25% singles team factor (roughly 25% of MLP ties go to DreamBreaker … 92 of 382 matches last season for example) to come up with the below team ranking.
Here’s the four component power rank lists (when there’s an asterisk* that indicates a lefty, though I did not comprehensively assign lefties throughout my xls).
MLP Preseason Men's Doubles power ranks
Todd Boss
You may quibble with the rankings of in particular teams 3-6 a bit, and you may think I’ve got some of the younger players too low. Fair enough. Also, for some of the lower ranked teams the “bench” player may actually be the starter in some cases; Lenhard has really stepped up lately for example, as has Pham for Bay Area.
MLP 2026 pre-season power ranks for Women's Doubles.
Todd Boss
My initial reaction after doing these ranks was noting just how high the Palm Beach team will start. Sewing is a relative unknown but has the same level of dominance on the APP that Haworth had before moving over last year, but I could understand if you think that team is overrated as compared to some of the veteran-laden teams just below it.
2026 MLP Pre-season Men's Singles Power Ranks
Todd Boss
I’m operating under the assumption that teams who have drafted a singles-specialist for their bench are going to use them in DreamBreakers. This is Haworth on Brooklyn, Joseph on the Mad Drops, Crum on Columbus, maybe even Goins on St.Louis since he just made the Tour Finals (though I’m not sure who makes way). I may have Columbus way, way too low here since Daescu no longer plays any singles, but the rise of the singles specialist in the sport makes this a somewhat difficult endeavor.
2026 MLP power ranks for Women's Singles.
Todd Boss
The distribution of the top singles players in the sport is pretty apparent here, with the 8 women who qualified for the Tour Finals distributed amongst the top seven teams ranked here. Las Vegas has an embarrassment of riches, with two of the top 8 ranked singles players right now in Buckner & Wang, plus the 9th ranked player in Truluck who filed in at the Tour Finals when Waters dropped out. I still couldn’t put LV overtop of the Waters-led New Jersey team though; there’s just such a gap between ALW and the rest of the field. As with the men, there’s a few singles-specialists in this group who likely play DreamBreakers instead of their doubles teammates (Bouchard for LA, DiMuzio for Utah).
Put all these ranks together to get an overall power rank:
MLP Overall Team pre-season 2026 Power Ranks
Todd Boss
There are some interesting “tiers” here, based on the way that the data shakes out.
Lastly, here’s a fun exercise; how does team payroll correlate with these power ranks? I’ve captured the 2026 player retention fee (irrespective of who paid it earlier this year, as we’ve had trades since these fees were paid) as a “payroll” figure for each of the 20 teams and put it side by side with the above power ranks.
Overall Power ranks with Payroll
Todd Boss
Observations and Thoughts
The 2026 MLP season kicks off a week from today on 5/22/26 in Dallas.
Any typos or payroll aggregation errors are mine and I apologize in advance. However, if you see an error by all means reach out and I’ll correct. I’ve relied mostly on my own draft artifacts and spreadsheet work, as well as from artifacts provided and maintained by the league, many of which are for Media-eyes only.
Writer’s note: I realize after publishing that I failed to have these teams reflect the 3/14/26 3-team trade involving Truong, Phillips, and Dunlap. If this trade were reflected in the ranks, I’d guess that Miami and Carolina’s ranks would slide down, while Columbus’ would probably stay the same since Truong would be their bench player.
Also, another trade was announced the day after this analysis that may also have impacted the ranks involving Dallas & Las Vegas.
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