I'm trying to create a Pandas DataFrame containing the MLBAM IDs of every currently active professional baseball player in MLB and the minor leagues who matches criteria such as age, salary, or statistics. I already have Pandas, pybaseball, and MLB-StatsAPI installed, but I'm open to using another library if needed. Simply iterating through a range of IDs won't work because I only want valid active players.
2 Answers
Pandas can handle the filtering and DataFrame work, but the main challenge is getting a complete, current player list. A dedicated Stats API endpoint is generally more reliable for active-player data than generating IDs or cleaning a reverse-lookup result.
Instead of using pybaseball’s reverse-lookup helper, query the MLB Stats API directly. The sports players endpoint, such as `/api/v1/sports/1/players?season=2026`, returns players with roster spots for that season. Each record includes an `id` field, which is the MLBAM ID. You can load the response into a DataFrame and then filter by the fields or additional data you need.
This is exactly what I needed—thanks!