⚾ Baseball Reference Stats Scraper

🚀 Export MLB all-time single-season batting and pitching leaders in seconds. No account required. Just pick a stat and run.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-22 · 📊 11 fields per record · 500+ records per stat · Coverage: MLB history 1871-present

The Baseball Reference Stats Scraper pulls all-time single-season leaders from baseball-reference.com - the gold standard for MLB historical data. Choose from 17 key batting and pitching statistics, from home runs to ERA, and get a clean ranked dataset with player URLs, season year, age, plate appearances, and batting hand.

All data is live, scraped in real-time from Baseball Reference's ranked leader tables. Each record links directly to the player's profile page for drill-down research.

Coverage

• 17 statistics: HR, RBI, Batting Average, OPS, Slugging %, On-Base %, Hits, Runs, Stolen Bases, Walks, Strikeouts, Wins, ERA, Pitcher Strikeouts, WHIP, Saves, Innings Pitched
• MLB history: All recorded seasons from 1871 to present
• 500+ ranked records per statistic
• 11 data fields per record including player URL and age

Target Audience / Use Cases

Who Uses This	What For
Fantasy baseball players	Research historical player performance trends
Sports analysts	Build statistical models on offensive/pitching records
Journalists and bloggers	Fact-check records and all-time rankings
Baseball historians	Track how records have evolved over eras
Data scientists	ML training data for baseball performance models
Developers	Populate apps with real MLB historical stats

📋 What the Baseball Reference Stats Scraper does

• Fetches all-time single-season ranked leaders for any of 17 MLB statistics
• Returns rank, player name, player profile URL, season year, age, plate appearances, batting hand, and stat value
• Supports both batting stats (HR, RBI, AVG, OPS, H, R, SB, BB, SO) and pitching stats (W, ERA, SO, WHIP, SV, IP)
• Respects free/paid tier limits automatically
• Delivers clean, typed records with no null fields

💡 Why it matters: Baseball Reference is the definitive source for MLB history. This actor gives you programmatic access to its ranked leader tables - hundreds of records per stat - for research, analysis, or app development, without any scraping setup.

🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon

⚙️ Input

Field	Type	Description	Default
statType	select	The statistic to retrieve leaders for	HR
maxItems	integer	Maximum records to return	10

Available stat types:

Code	Label	Category
HR	Home Runs	Batting
RBI	Runs Batted In	Batting
batting_avg	Batting Average	Batting
onbase_plus_slugging	OPS	Batting
slugging_perc	Slugging Percentage	Batting
onbase_perc	On-Base Percentage	Batting
H	Hits	Batting
R	Runs Scored	Batting
SB	Stolen Bases	Batting
BB	Walks	Batting
SO	Strikeouts by Batter	Batting
W	Wins	Pitching
ERA	Earned Run Average	Pitching
SO_pitcher	Pitcher Strikeouts	Pitching
WHIP	WHIP	Pitching
SV	Saves	Pitching
IP	Innings Pitched	Pitching

Example input - top 10 HR seasons:

{
    "statType": "HR",
    "maxItems": 10
}

Example input - top ERA seasons:

{
    "statType": "ERA",
    "maxItems": 25
}

⚠️ Good to Know: Free plan users are automatically limited to 10 records per run. Upgrade to a paid plan to retrieve up to 1,000,000 records. Create a free account w/ $5 credit

📊 Output

Field	Type	Description
🔢 rank	integer	All-time rank for this statistic
👤 playerName	string	Player full name
🔗 playerUrl	string	URL to player page on baseball-reference.com
📅 season	integer	Season year when the record was set
🎂 age	integer	Player age during that season
🏟️ plateAppearances	integer	Plate appearances in that season
🖐️ bats	string	Batting hand (L/R/S)
📊 value	string	Stat value achieved
🏷️ statType	string	Stat type code (e.g. HR, ERA)
📝 statLabel	string	Human-readable stat label
🕒 scrapedAt	string	ISO timestamp when record was scraped
❌ error	string	Error message if scraping failed

Sample records:

[
  {
    "rank": 1,
    "playerName": "Barry Bonds",
    "playerUrl": "https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bondsba01.shtml",
    "season": 2001,
    "age": 36,
    "plateAppearances": 664,
    "bats": "L",
    "value": "73",
    "statType": "HR",
    "statLabel": "Home Runs",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-05-22T01:56:49.081Z",
    "error": null
  },
  {
    "rank": 2,
    "playerName": "Mark McGwire",
    "playerUrl": "https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mcgwima01.shtml",
    "season": 1998,
    "age": 34,
    "plateAppearances": 681,
    "bats": "R",
    "value": "70",
    "statType": "HR",
    "statLabel": "Home Runs",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-05-22T01:56:49.081Z",
    "error": null
  }
]

✨ Why choose this Actor

Feature	Benefit
🏆 Real Baseball Reference data	The gold standard MLB historical source
17 stat types	Batting and pitching leaders in one actor
500+ records per stat	Full all-time leaderboard access
Player profile URLs	Direct links for drill-down research
Age and handedness	Rich contextual player data
Stealth browser	Works reliably without blocks
Instant results	No pagination needed - single-page tables

📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Data freshness	Effort	Records
Baseball Reference Scraper (this)	Real-time	Zero setup	500+ per stat
Manual copy-paste	Static snapshot	High	Limited
MLB Stats API	Live games	API setup	Seasonal
Custom scraper	Real-time	Dev time	Variable

🚀 How to use

1. Create a free Apify account
2. Open the Baseball Reference Stats Scraper actor
3. Select a statType from the dropdown (e.g. HR for home runs)
4. Set maxItems to the number of ranked records you want
5. Click Start and wait ~15 seconds
6. Download your dataset as CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML

💼 Business use cases

Fantasy Baseball Research

Analyze which players had the most productive seasons historically. Cross-reference peak seasons with player ages to identify performance windows. Build historical comps for current players.

Sports Journalism and Content

Verify record claims instantly. Generate fact-checked stat tables for articles. Find the answer to "Who had the most HR seasons in a career?" in seconds.

Analytics and Machine Learning

Build regression models using historical stat rankings. Train predictive models on seasonal performance data. Correlate batting hand with slugging percentage across eras.

Baseball Apps and Tools

Populate leaderboard displays in fan apps. Build era-comparison tools. Power trivia games with verified historical records.

🔌 Automating Baseball Reference Scraper

Connect the actor to thousands of apps via Make, Zapier, or the Apify API:

• Make (Integromat): Schedule weekly stat pulls and push to Google Sheets
• Zapier: Trigger stat collection and email results to your team
• Slack: Post updated leaderboards to your baseball channel
• Google Sheets: Maintain a live MLB stats spreadsheet
• Airtable: Build a searchable baseball history database
• REST API: Integrate directly into your application via the Apify API

🌟 Beyond business use cases

Research and Academia

Sports economists studying the economics of player contracts vs. historical performance. Sociologists analyzing demographic trends in MLB leadership across decades.

Creative Projects

Writers building baseball fiction with accurate historical context. Game designers creating authentic baseball simulation mechanics.

Non-profit and Community

Youth baseball coaches using historical data to teach game fundamentals. Baseball Hall of Fame researchers validating historical records.

Experimentation

Test hypotheses about baseball eras - Deadball Era vs. Steroid Era stat distributions. Explore correlations between team stats and championship years.

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

You can ask an AI assistant (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) questions like:

• "What does the Baseball Reference Stats Scraper output for ERA leaders?"
• "How do I get the top 50 stolen base seasons using the Apify actor?"
• "Which stat type should I use to find the best pitching seasons?"

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

❓ Is this scraper free to use? Free Apify accounts can retrieve up to 10 records per run. Create a free account to get started, and upgrade for unlimited records.

❓ How many records are available per stat? Each leaderboard contains 500+ ranked records covering the full history of MLB.

❓ Does this include minor league stats? No - Baseball Reference's leader tables cover MLB (major league) records only.

❓ How current is the data? Baseball Reference updates their leader tables regularly during the season. The scraper fetches live data each run.

❓ Can I get stats for a specific player? This actor focuses on leaderboard rankings. Use the playerUrl field in each record to link to individual player pages for full career stats.

❓ What's the difference between SO and SO_pitcher? SO are strikeouts by batters (a batting stat). SO_pitcher are strikeouts recorded by pitchers (a pitching stat).

❓ Why does ERA leaderboard show very low values? ERA (Earned Run Average) is a pitching quality stat - lower is better. The leaderboard ranks the best (lowest) ERA seasons in MLB history.

❓ Can I get team stats instead of individual player stats? This actor scrapes individual player leader tables. Baseball Reference has separate team stats pages that may be covered in future actors.

❓ How long does a run take? Typically 10-20 seconds per run, including browser startup, page load, and parsing.

❓ Is baseball-reference.com free to access? Baseball Reference is publicly accessible without login for leader table data. This actor uses that public access.

❓ Will this break if Baseball Reference changes their layout? The actor targets stable table IDs in the Baseball Reference HTML. If the site structure changes, ParseForge will update the actor promptly.

🔌 Integrate with any app

Connect the Baseball Reference Stats Scraper to your workflow:

Productivity: Google Sheets, Airtable, Notion, Coda Communication: Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams, Email Automation: Make (Integromat), Zapier, n8n, Pipedream Development: REST API, Webhooks, Python, JavaScript, R Data: BigQuery, Snowflake, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, S3 Visualization: Tableau, Power BI, Google Data Studio, Metabase

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💡 Pro Tip: Browse the complete ParseForge collection for 100+ specialized data extractors across sports, finance, real estate, and more.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: This actor is an independent tool, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Baseball Reference. It accesses only publicly available information from baseball-reference.com for personal research, analysis, and legitimate business use. Please respect Baseball Reference's terms of service and rate limits.