Blue Jays general manager JP Ricciardi gave one of two keynote speeches in the morning. This was a sight to behold: a room chock-full of MIT students captivated by a jock. Some highlights:

* He said that Moneyball really opened up the industry to new ways of thinking. This surprised me. I always assumed that by the time the book was released that at least some degree of analytic thinking had pervaded most front offices. His comments made it seem otherwise. One person who had worked with front offices told me that, even today, only three or four teams in baseball are as rigorous with and as receptive to analytics as they ought to be. In the interest of discretion, he declined to name which teams, but the impression I got from him was that publicly available analysis is not far off from what the most sophisticated teams are doing.

* His front office is very stats-oriented, focusing mostly on OBP and OPS. He noted that they keep an eye on the more advanced statistics available, although he was still skeptical about VORP. (Keith Woolner, inventor of VORP, raised his hand after the speech and said, "I invented VORP, so if you have any questions I'll be happy to answer them." To which Ricciardi replied, "I need to talk to you later.")