# The Long Ball

The Long Ball is a static baseball analytics site at https://thelongball.app. It publishes the Longball Index for hitter home-run-quality contact and the Hot Dog Index for pitcher accountability on loud longball contact allowed.

## Pages

- Homepage / Longball Index: https://thelongball.app/
- Hot Dog Stand: https://thelongball.app/hot-dog-stand
- Home Run Distance Leaderboard: https://thelongball.app/home-run-distance-leaderboard
- Longball Index landing page: https://thelongball.app/longball-index
- Cheapies landing page: https://thelongball.app/cheapies
- Daily Dong landing page: https://thelongball.app/daily-dong
- Notes: https://thelongball.app/notes
- About / Methodology: https://thelongball.app/about

## Core Concepts

- Longball Index (LBI): A hitter-facing plus-style metric for pure home-run contact quality per batted-ball event. LBI v1.3 is anchored by Baseball Savant Adjusted xHR/BBE, with Barrel%, HR-Window Thunder Rate, and Hard Hit%. HR-Window Thunder Rate measures 105+ mph batted balls launched between 25 and 40 degrees per BBE. See https://thelongball.app/about/longball-index
- Hot Dog Index: A pitcher-facing companion metric that punishes pitchers for allowing loud, home-run-quality contact. It uses Baseball Savant Home Run Tracker and Statcast batted-ball data. See https://thelongball.app/about/hot-dog-index
- Daily Dong: The loudest or most impressive actual home run from the latest available game date. See https://thelongball.app/about/daily-dong
- Hot Dog Robbery: The best HR-capable batted ball from the latest available game date that did not become an actual home run. See https://thelongball.app/about/hot-dog-robbery
- Cheapest Dong: The flimsiest actual home run from the latest available game date, preferably a Doubter. See https://thelongball.app/about/cheapest-dong
- Cheapies: Actual home runs classified as Doubters, meaning they would clear only 1-7 MLB parks. Cheapie Rate is actual Doubter HR divided by actual HR total. See https://thelongball.app/about/cheapies

## Data Files

- Current Longball Index JSON: https://thelongball.app/data/hr-distance-latest.json
- Current-season Longball Index JSON: https://thelongball.app/data/longball-index-2026.json
- Historical Longball Index JSON: https://thelongball.app/data/longball-index-2025.json
- Historical Longball Index JSON: https://thelongball.app/data/longball-index-2024.json
- Historical Longball Index JSON: https://thelongball.app/data/longball-index-2023.json
- Historical Longball Index JSON: https://thelongball.app/data/longball-index-2022.json
- Historical Longball Index JSON: https://thelongball.app/data/longball-index-2021.json
- Current Hot Dog Stand JSON: https://thelongball.app/data/hot-dog-stand-latest.json
- Current-season Hot Dog Index JSON: https://thelongball.app/data/hot-dog-index-2026.json
- Historical Hot Dog Index JSON: https://thelongball.app/data/hot-dog-index-2025.json
- Historical Hot Dog Index JSON: https://thelongball.app/data/hot-dog-index-2024.json
- Historical Hot Dog Index JSON: https://thelongball.app/data/hot-dog-index-2023.json
- Historical Hot Dog Index JSON: https://thelongball.app/data/hot-dog-index-2022.json
- Historical Hot Dog Index JSON: https://thelongball.app/data/hot-dog-index-2021.json
- Daily Features archive JSON: https://thelongball.app/data/daily-features-2026.json
- Date-stamped Tale of the Tape archives: https://thelongball.app/data/tale-of-the-tape/YYYY-MM-DD.json
- Weekly movers JSON: https://thelongball.app/data/weekly-movers-latest.json
- Editorial posts JSON: https://thelongball.app/data/posts.json

The Longball Index and Hot Dog Index JSON files include top-level metadata fields (`site`, `dataset`, `season`, `description`, `methodologyVersion`, `sourceNotes`, and `fields`) so crawlers and agents can interpret the rows without relying on the frontend.

## Documentation

- Data dictionary: https://thelongball.app/docs/data-dictionary.md
- Longball Index methodology: https://thelongball.app/docs/longball-index-methodology.md
- Hot Dog Index methodology: https://thelongball.app/docs/hot-dog-index-methodology.md
- Static Notes archive: https://thelongball.app/docs/notes.md
- Static About HTML: https://thelongball.app/static/about.html
- Static Notes HTML: https://thelongball.app/static/notes.html
- Static methodology HTML:
  - https://thelongball.app/static/docs/longball-index-methodology.html
  - https://thelongball.app/static/docs/hot-dog-index-methodology.html

Notes posts include Schema.org Article JSON-LD in `posts.json` and in the generated static HTML note pages.

## Architecture Notes

The frontend never queries Baseball Savant or pybaseball directly. Statcast and Baseball Savant access happens in scheduled Python data jobs. The browser reads precomputed static JSON from `/data/`.