On the CHOPPING BLOCK🔪! STL Shock drop speculation💙⚡️❤️

The MLP Drop deadline is far away, and I will write more about it in the future and will probably do a column on all of my predicted drops. But with the recent announcement of Erik Lange as the St. Louis Shock’s OFFICIAL Head Coach (‼️‼️‼️), I’ve been pondering this delightfully interesting and potentially highly consequential decision more in the last few days, and how it will affect me (whether I am the one dropped or not!).

For those who don’t follow MLP and the ever-changing rules that closely, to put it simply- every team has to drop 1 of their 3 remaining originally drafted players. There are a lot of exceptions, but effectively, for the Shock, Gabe, Hayden and I were all drafted to their team in the 2024 draft, so one of us has to be let go before the start of the next season. Whoever is dropped will be entered into a draft pool and could be reacquired by the Shock, or another team. It would be an auction, effectively. This is how Kate ended up back on the Shock.

My team and the Dallas Flash have the toughest decisions to make. The Flash have to drop one of JW, Jorja, or Tyra… I can’t wait to see how all the dominoes fall!

Whenever I first bring up this conversation topic with people, their initial reaction is that I am being absurd. Of course, the Shock wouldn’t drop me! They say things like… “women are more valuable”, “you’re the captain of the team”, “you’re the #2 woman! stop!”, etc…

But in all of their reasoning on why it couldn’t be me, they fail to consider one very, very crucial piece of information. I am expensive. Here are the prices the Shock would have to pay to the league to retain each of us in the 2026 season:

You have to remember that Hayden was the 21st pick of the draft, and Gabe the 24th. Now that’s a crazy thing to think about!!! I was the 3rd overall pick, and would probably still go around that spot, but Gabe and H would undoubtedly be taken high in the first round if we were to do a full redraft.

So, in summary, I might be a cheap date (spoiler: I am), but I am not cheap to have on an MLP team. I’m more than three times more expensive than Gabe, and nearly three times more expensive than Hayden. Am I worth that much?

The free agency draft is basically just an auction for draft position, and then once a team has won that position, they can select whoever they want. Last year, the Shock won the first position for $130,000 and selected Kate Fahey. The prices weren’t as high as what was generally expected, and I wonder if that will continue in the 2026 season. It’s so hard to predict what the final numbers will end up being, but with some teams being forced to drop some really high-profile names, I’d be shocked if the first few picks of the draft weren’t significantly more expensive than they were in 2025.

There are so many unknowns, so many things to think about, and so much game theory. If JW Johnson and Hayden Patriquin are on the board, which will a team choose to take if they win a spot where they need a man? What if it’s me and Tyra Black or Jorja Johnson? Last year it seemed as if teams didn’t compete that hard for top talent, but I expect that will change significantly in 2026, especially with MLP’s newest team, the Palm Beach Royals, entering the mix and likely being very hungry for some homegrown, Palm Beach-based talent.

As I already discussed, Gabe only costs $92,500 to keep. That’s a STEAL!!! He is half of the best men’s doubles team in the world, generally considered to be the best right-side man in the game, and is also a great mixed player. He is long, rangy, and elastic in a way no one else really is. To top it all off, he’s adorable, and I honestly think he’s up there for best interview in pickleball.

Gabe finished the season ranked 4th in the player standings, going 63-13. I was just behind him at 5th, with a 59-15 record, and Hayden was actually first, with a 65-9 record (‼️😳). To note, these standings do not include the MLP Cup, but do include everything else (regular season, mid season tournament, and playoffs), and I omitted bench players who had played only a few matches (sorry Felicity, Marcela, and Pat😂).

Gabe is so dominant on the right in a way that is hard to translate into words. I had a recent conversation with a male pro in which he said “___ can’t read Gabe, Gabe is the only person he says he can’t read”, to which I replied “Can anyone read Gabe?”. I consider myself to be quite good at anticipating, but even after two years of incessant rec in front of Gabe, I still have absolutely no clue what he is doing. Lost in all of this is also how good at singles Gabe is! He has a couple titles to his name and has been very clutch for us in dreambreakers many times. Plus, him and Kate had an incredible record in mixed playing mostly against #1 teams. Losing him would hurt a lot.

If you’re determined to keep me, and can’t stomach losing Gabe, then you have to drop Hayden. But… HOW COULD A TEAM DROP HAYDEN?! Especially for only $102,500. Hayden is the most versatile player in pickleball. The best player on the left when he is hot, arguably the best player on the right when he is hot, and a stud at mixed as well when he is locked in and firing on all cylinders. He had a patch in the middle of the year where he didn’t play to his level, but refound his form in Vegas and at Worlds, and him and I were a force in mixed this year both at MLP and PPAs.

We haven’t seen him on the left much in the last year without Gabe (who as I discussed, makes life easy for his left side partner), but at Worlds and Vegas he looked just fine covering a lot of court with Federico as a true left-side king. Whether/not he can maintain that consistency is the question the Shock will probably have to ask themselves, but in all honesty, if I were the GM of this team, I would be choosing between myself and Gabe as the drop. After availability, versatility is probably the best ability at MLP.

Kate and I were a very good women’s team this year, but we were not as good as in 2024, and we were far worse than the boys. Their record in men’s was insaneeeee, going 29-4 and keeping us in a lot of matches where we dropped women’s. Splitting up such a dominant team would be a big risk.

As for me … I’m also very hard to let go of. I’ve been playing great this year at both MLP and PPA, am generally considered to be the leader of the team (my responsibilities have lessened with Erik’s involvement, thankfully🙏🏼), and have historically been pretty involved in a lot of the decisions the team has made. But… I cost roughly 3x what the boys do! If we all were to go for the same cost in the auction, the relative increase in roster cost would be so much higher if one of the boys had to be reacquired.

That’s the decision effectively that the Shock have to weigh. If that first auction slot goes for $250,000 and they dropped me, they would actually save money on their roster (~ $50,000), but if they had dropped one of the boys it would be an increase in roster cost of roughly $150,000. Of course, this is all assuming they want the exact same team back and that other teams don’t want one of us badly, which I assume they will. I expect things to get very messy, and very very interesting.

So, who do you think the drop will be? And why? Will ownership do whatever it takes to buy one of us back? Let me know your thoughts!!! (:

Appreciate and love you all! Your internet bestie, Anna❤️

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