Major League Pickleball Teams Busy At The Second Waiver Wire Ahead Of St. Louis

A.J. Koller is back! He gets picked up by Chicago in the 2nd Wavier period.

MLP

This week saw Major League Pickleball’s second Waiver wire period of the season. Combined with a slew of interesting trades ahead of the waiver period, we have enough transactions and player movement intrigue as to make it worth its own post.

So, here goes a quick recap of the moves made this week, with some analysis and some thoughts.

• We covered some of the mid-May trades in the first two MLP event recaps. See there for Parker/Walker, Buckner/Smith, and Castillo/Truong moves.
• On 6/1/26, Los Angeles Mad Drops flipped the missing in action Genie Bouchard (who is in Paris covering the French Open) to Carolina for Samantha Parker. Carolina also received cash, which is laughable since they don’t even bother to cover their team’s travel expenses. Carolina will now presumably move Abigail Hutton into their starting lineup, weakening them a bit from where they were before (this remains to be seen, based on subsequent moves Carolina will make the next day). Meanwhile, Parker gets onto a championship-level team and slots in as their female singles specialist, likely taking DreamBreaker points from Kawamoto. As we’ll soon see, Bouchard isn’t done moving.

• Texas and Miami made an interesting trade: Texas shipped off their star Dylan Frazier in return for the very impressive newcomer Nico Acevedo. They also flipped bench females in Yoshitomi & Cavataio. Miami nets cash in the deal of course, one more feather in Miami GM Johnny Goldberg’s cap. Frazier’s star seems to have fallen in MLP, and in pickleball in general. For those who don’t remember, Frazier was the No. 1 ranked doubles player on the PPA as recently as September 2024 and he was the 13th overall pick for $335k in the initial 2024 dispersal draft. He was dropped and then redrafted in 2026 for half that figure ($170k) and now moves to a team most pundits projected for near last place this season. Can he improve Miami’s results?
• For those not following the scouting acumen of Goldberg, his “finds” have included Eric Oncins, Roscoe Bellamy, Noe Khlif, Yuta Funemizu, Nico Acevedo, and Clayton Powell. All of these players were initially drafted or waiver claims by Goldberg, who does a great job farming the courts for up-and-coming talent.
• Texas then immediately flipped Yoshitomi to Carolina for Bouchard. This is Bouchard’s third trade just this year. Why would Texas want Bouchard? Well, as we’re about to see, Texas was making moves knowing that they wanted to pick up a backup female in the waiver process. So it didn’t entirely matter who their backup female was; she was set to get dropped on 6/2/26.
• Just ahead of the waivers, California traded away their captain Michael Loyd to Carolina in exchange for Connor Mogle, who was set to be dropped in the wavier wire just a few minutes later. California changing strategy, and Loyd heads to a team with two other veterans that seem to be splitting playing time.

• In the waiver period, Miami dropped just-acquired Cavataio to pick up PPA Asia tour veteran Rika Fujiwara, who just won gold last weekend in the 2026 PPA Asia Macao Open. Known for her singles play, the former top WTA tennis pro may push Widdershoven for starting time on this team, assuming she’s committed to traveling to the States on the regular.
• Chicago dropped its bench player Tom Protzek and picked up the venerable veteran A.J. Koller. I wrote about Koller’s “super-sub” 2025 season and his wish to get onto a 2026 to contribute this past February, and was somewhat surprised he didn’t get picked up in the 2026 draft. Now he joins a veteran team with Navratil and Johnson, meaning he likely doesn’t get a ton of playing time but can help with team chemistry. I chatted with Koller briefly after this move and he’s excited to be playing and looks forward to seeing what his role will be.
• Fun fact: this is now Koller’s 9th MLP team. Here’s his team history:
  • 2021: Chimeras (7th overall male picked and league finalist). This team merged with ATX, then folded in the 2024 merger/buyout period.
  • 2022: Drafted by the Mad Drops (now known as the LA Mad Drops)
  • 2022: Traded to the Jack Rabbits mid-season (they’re now known as the Bay Area Breakers)
  • 2023 Season 1: SoCal
  • 2023 Season 2: Utah
  • 2024: Went undrafted; he was my No. 1 draft snub. Then, got picked up temporarily by Arizona (now known as the Phoenix Flames) to cover for the suspended Andrei Daescu.
  • 2024: After Daescu returned, he got dropped and then picked up by LA Mad Drops for his 2nd stint with that team.
  • 2025: Once again he went undrafted, but started serving as the designated on-site sub for MLP events that he was already traveling to anyways. He played one weekend with the NY Hustlers, then another weekend with LA (his 3rd stint with the team) but remained a free agent.
  • 2025: With a long-term injury to Dekel Bar, Brooklyn finagled the semi-permanent acquisition of Koller for a big chunk of the season, where he played alongside Riley Newman and went 14-5 to help Brooklyn to a top playoff finish. Unfortunately, when Bar recovered enough to play, Koller was let go and Brooklyn crashed out of the playoffs early.
  • 2026: undrafted again as the youth movement takes over the league, but now picked up as a bench player by Chicago.
• Carolina dropped Alli Phillips to claim Nicole Conard. Both of Carolina’s starting females now are waiver claims made this season and they seem to be getting actively worse as the season progresses with all these slew of moves.
• California dropped just-acquired Connor Mogle for James Delgado. Amazingly, Delgado was dropped just three weeks ago by Carolina for … you guessed it, Connor Mogle. It’s like when a team in baseball trades someone for a Player to be Named Later … then that player turns out to be himself. California likes the Delgado energy and will see how he fits in with the rest of the team.
• Texas dropped the oft-traded Genie Bouchard for former challenger level player Marcela Hones (ironically, her doubles partner the last time she played a PPA event). Bouchard’s MLP 2026 year thus looks like the following:
  • Dropped by Phoenix at the keeper deadline
  • Drafted by Florida for $20k
  • Traded to LA Mad Drops for Palau and Cash
  • Traded to Carolina for Parker
  • Traded to Texas for Yoshitomi
  • Waived by Texas
• Bouchard only played half the PPA events in the 2026 spring season, missing time to be an on-site commentator at both the Australian and now French Opens for either TNT or the Tennis Channel. She also missed a PPA event to play in the Pickleball Slam 4. On more than one occasion she’s been listed in a draw when we could watch her live on the TV at a tennis event providing coverage, only to see the tour change the draws last minute. One has to wonder what her contract stipulates in this regard. We saw Sam Querrey “retire” earlier this year under similar circumstances; he’s a lead commentator for the Tennis Channel at Masters 1000 and slam events and it seems likely he had little chance of making his contract obligated appearances.

Play in St. Louis starts this week 10am CDT on Thursday, with some of these newly acquired players set to play for their new teams.