allow fewer hits on balls in the field of play. Subsequent independent research by Phil Birnbaum, Clifford Blau and Tom Tippett confirmed Wright's findings, but Wright still praises McCracken as "... 'the' guy who really got people to understand that most folks overestimate the pitcher's ability to influence the number of hits that result from balls batted into the field of play." Bill James also expressed some skepticism but recognized the potential value of McCracken's findings if further research bore them out. He argued that "the research really should be done, for several reasons. First, if McCracken turns out to be correct, this has important consequences, even allowing us, to a certain extent, to predict movements in pitcher's records. . . ." In his New Historical Baseball Abstract in 2001, James acknowledged that McCracken was correct, that the results were significant, and that James himself felt "stupid for not having realized it 30 years ago." Rob Neyer noted the impact of McCracken's discovery on James' subsequent work. The discovery and its influence on baseball analysis is outlined in Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. McCracken continued to refine his new statistic, including addressing the issue of knuckleballers in his DIPS 2.0 in 2002. He published DIPS statistical results as well as extensions and improvements to his initial formulas in other forums, including Baseball Primer (now Baseball Think Factory). Baseball researchers have continued to evaluate and to propose refinements to DIPS, such as Tom Tippett in his 2003 article "Can Pitchers Prevent Hits on Balls in Play?". Subsequent career Red Sox A year and a half after the publication of his "Pitchers and Defense" article, McCracken's discovery earned him a consulting position with the Boston Red Sox. An important consequence of this was that by early 2003, he ceased publishing revisions of his formulas or updated results. He announced this step with excitement on his website on February 18, 2003. McCracken worked for the Red Sox through June 2005. After the Boston hiatus McCracken continued to think about how to measure performance in a variety of organized sports, such as international football (American soccer). In 2007, he began a blog, vorosmccracken.com, with the subtitle “triumphant return of The Knack of the baseball world." The blog focused much of its attention on international soccer, including ratings of the national teams and forecasts of team performance in the World Cup 2010