I've been trying to create a Pandas DataFrame containing the MLBAM ID for every currently active professional baseball player in MLB and MiLB who matches certain 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 necessary. Simply iterating through a range of possible IDs won't work because I only want active players.
2 Answers
Rather than relying on pybaseball’s reverse lookup, use the MLB StatsAPI sports endpoint. For example, `/api/v1/sports/1/players?season=2026` returns players with roster spots for that season, and each record’s `id` value is the MLBAM ID. You can load the response into a DataFrame and then filter by age, salary, stats, or any other fields you need.
Pandas can handle the filtering once you have the player records, but the main challenge is finding a reliable source for the active-player list. Make sure the endpoint or dataset you use includes both MLB and MiLB players for the season you’re analyzing, since a general ID range will also contain retired, inactive, or nonexistent players.
That’s exactly what I needed—thanks! One request is much cleaner than trying to generate and filter possible IDs.