Retrieving Standings and Rankings

This integration scenario explains how to retrieve and render MLB standings, rankings, and season award results using the Sportradar MLB API. It covers how to build division and league tables, display playoff clinch and elimination context, and enrich season pages with award metadata and recipients.

This scenario is commonly used to:

• Render division and league standings tables
• Display postseason clinch, wildcard, and elimination indicators
• Power “rank-only” widgets (division rank, league rank, clinch status)
• Populate season award pages (award definitions plus yearly recipients)

This scenario focuses on standings, rank placement, and awards. Performance statistics (game, season, and splits) are covered separately in the Retrieving Game, Season, and Split Statistics integration scenario.

Overview

Standings and rankings are closely related, but they are not the same thing.

Standings vs. Rankings

Standings provide the complete competitive table for a season, including:

• Team records (win/loss, home/away)
• Games back and streak context
• Elimination numbers
• Postseason indicators
• Rank placement (division and league)

In the Standings response, you will also find a rank object per team (for example rank.division, rank.league, rank.clinched) alongside record fields like win, loss, games_back, and elimination metadata.

Rankings are a streamlined view focused on placement and postseason status, including:

• Division rank
• League rank
• Clinch status

Rankings are useful when you only need rank placement and clinch badges without the full standings record breakdown.

You can retrieve standings for both regular season (REG) and preseason (PRE) contexts, allowing applications to display spring training standings separately from regular season tables when applicable.

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What Does “Clinched” Mean?

A team has clinched when it has mathematically secured a postseason placement and can no longer lose that position regardless of remaining games.

In the MLB feeds, this appears in the rank.clinched field and may include values such as:

• division — Clinched the division title
• division_homefield — Clinched the division and home-field advantage
• wildcard — Secured a Wild Card berth
• eliminated — Officially eliminated from postseason contention

Clinch status reflects postseason qualification, not regular-season ordering. Always use rank placement and record context to determine competitive order.

Relevant Feeds

The following feeds support standings tables, rank-only widgets, and awards context.

High-Level Workflow

A typical standings and rankings integration follows this flow:

Season Context → Standings or Rankings → Postseason Indicators → Awards List → Seasonal Awards

1. Identify the season_year and season_type
2. Pull Standings (recommended for standings tables) or Rankings (rank-only widgets)
3. Render postseason context using rank.clinched and elimination fields (available in Standings and Rankings)
4. Load the Awards List once to map award IDs to names and descriptions
5. Pull Seasonal Awards for the season and render recipients (optionally join to Awards List for richer display)

Integration Steps

1. Establish Season Context

Determine:

• season_year
• season_type (PRE, REG)

These values scope both standings and awards to the correct season.

2. Retrieve Standings or Rankings

Choose the feed based on the UI you are building:

• Standings for full tables and record context (win/loss, games back, streaks, elimination numbers)

  HTTP

  GET https://api.sportradar.com/mlb/{access_level}/v8/{language_code}/seasons/{season_year}/{season_type}/standings.{format}

  
  

• Rankings for rank-only components where you only need placement and clinch status

  HTTP

  GET https://api.sportradar.com/mlb/{access_level}/v8/{language_code}/seasons/{season_year}/{season_type}/rankings.{format}

  
  

Standings is the default choice for most standings pages because it already includes rank and clinch fields in addition to records. Ensure to pull Standings and Rankings according to their update frequencies.

<league xmlns="http://feed.elasticstats.com/schema/baseball/v8/mlb/standings.xsd" alias="MLB" name="Major League Baseball" id="2fa448bc-fc17-4d3d-be03-e60e080fdc26">
  <season id="a91f72a5-9812-4acd-b3fd-482cb31468cd" year="2025" type="REG">
    <league alias="NL" name="National League" id="fbe91704-36df-4e7c-864a-06d236425999">
      <division alias="C" name="Central" id="95e2d773-d899-4751-b61a-b9463e5aa874">
        <team name="Brewers" market="Milwaukee" abbr="MIL" id="dcfd5266-00ce-442c-bc09-264cd20cf455" away_loss="36" away_win="45" elimination_number="0" games_back="0" home_loss="29" home_win="52" last_10_lost="6" last_10_won="4" loss="65" streak="W1" wild_card_back="0.0" win="97" win_p="0.599" al_loss="20" al_win="28" c_loss="21" c_win="31" w_loss="15" w_win="17" e_loss="9" e_win="21" division_elimination_number="0">
          <rank division="1" league="1" clinched="division_homefield"/>
        </team>
        <team name="Cubs" market="Chicago" abbr="CHC" id="55714da8-fcaf-4574-8443-59bfb511a524" away_loss="39" away_win="42" elimination_number="0" games_back="5" home_loss="31" home_win="50" last_10_lost="6" last_10_won="4" loss="70" streak="W3" wild_card_back="+9.0" win="92" win_p="0.568" al_loss="18" al_win="30" c_loss="22" c_win="30" w_loss="15" w_win="17" e_loss="15" e_win="15" division_elimination_number="-4">
          <rank division="2" league="4" clinched="wildcard"/>
        </team>
        <team name="Reds" market="Cincinnati" abbr="CIN" id="c874a065-c115-4e7d-b0f0-235584fb0e6f" away_loss="43" away_win="38" elimination_number="0" games_back="14" home_loss="36" home_win="45" last_10_lost="3" last_10_won="7" loss="79" streak="L1" wild_card_back="0.0" win="83" win_p="0.512" al_loss="22" al_win="26" c_loss="26" c_win="26" w_loss="13" w_win="17" e_loss="18" e_win="14" division_elimination_number="-13">
          <rank division="3" league="6" clinched="wildcard"/>
        </team>
        <team name="Cardinals" market="St. Louis" abbr="STL" id="44671792-dc02-4fdd-a5ad-f5f17edaa9d7" away_loss="47" away_win="34" elimination_number="-4" games_back="19" home_loss="37" home_win="44" last_10_lost="6" last_10_won="4" loss="84" streak="L4" wild_card_back="5.0" win="78" win_p="0.481" al_loss="26" al_win="22" c_loss="28" c_win="24" w_loss="15" w_win="16" e_loss="15" e_win="16" division_elimination_number="-18">
          <rank division="4" league="11" clinched="eliminated"/>
        </team>
        <team name="Pirates" market="Pittsburgh" abbr="PIT" id="481dfe7e-5dab-46ab-a49f-9dcc2b6e2cfd" away_loss="54" away_win="27" elimination_number="-11" games_back="26" home_loss="37" home_win="44" last_10_lost="4" last_10_won="6" loss="91" streak="L1" wild_card_back="12.0" win="71" win_p="0.438" al_loss="31" al_win="17" c_loss="33" c_win="19" w_loss="13" w_win="17" e_loss="14" e_win="18" division_elimination_number="-25">
          <rank division="5" league="13" clinched="eliminated"/>
        </team>
      </division>

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When to Use Rankings

Rankings is best used when you want a smaller payload focused on division rank, league rank, and clinch status, without record breakdowns like games back, streaks, and home/away splits.

3. Render Postseason Context

Both feeds expose postseason indicators via rank and clinch information:

• rank.division and rank.league for placement
• rank.clinched for clinch status (for example division, wildcard, eliminated)
• In Standings, additional context is available like games_back, wild_card_back, and elimination numbers

Common UI patterns:

• Clinch badges (division champion, wildcard, eliminated)
• Color-coded status in tables
• Tooltip explanations for clinch codes and elimination numbers

4. Load the Awards Catalog

Pull Awards List to retrieve the full set of award definitions:

• Award ID
• Award name
• Award description
• Award type (Player, Coach, etc.)

This is typically cached and reused, since it is a catalog rather than season-specific results.

5. Retrieve Seasonal Award Results

Pull Seasonal Awards for the target season to retrieve recipients:

• Award metadata (effective date, awarded time period, frequency)
• Recipient lists (winners and related team and player identifiers)

Then render season award pages and overlays, such as:

• Season recap modules (“Award winners”)
• Team and player highlight sections
• Award history panels (when combined with Player Profile or season navigation)

🏆

When Awards are Announced

For MLB, major season awards are typically announced shortly after the World Series concludes, during November.

Best Practices

• Default to Standings when building standings tables since it already includes rank and clinch fields along with record context.
• Use Rankings for rank-only widgets and lightweight postseason badge overlays.
• Cache Awards List and join it to Seasonal Awards so your UI can show award names and descriptions consistently.
• Treat clinch and elimination status as display metadata (badges, colors, tooltips). Competitive ordering should always be driven by the feed’s rank placement and record context.
• Pull Standings and Rankings according to their update frequencies.
• Use the Daily Change Log to monitor updates or revisions to standings.