Are there any SEO benifits to having a static front page on blog?

Based on reports the New version of Google's search engine (caffeine) will include an algorithm in regard to how fast a page loads. Static pages will generally load faster. However how much that will be a factor is not yet known but in regard to the front page I am of the opinion that a home page should always be SEOed content not a simple squeezepage

One great way to get spidered more often is to have a page that updates with new content (not copied) on a regular basis. The new google caffiene will be better at grabbing updates from pages that change often. It doesn't matter if it is static or running off a script as long as you are changing the content (with respect to regular spidering). If your page load time is 2.5 seconds or less, I don't think you have to worry about any penalties, and even 3 or 4 seconds should be okay with regard to google. More important is your visitors and their experience.

I assume you mean by having a static page it will be indexed and potentially rank in it's own right as it's content will not keep changing?

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If you're running wordpress, just use the wp-cache plugin to reduce load time. This way you can still have a regularly updating front page with your posts, but with close to the performance of a plain static page.

Another thing to do would be to limit the number of posts on this front page to about 5, instead of the 10 by default.

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And regarding whether it should be on the root of the domain or a subdirectory... (or even a subdomain)... I guess the key criteria would be how deep into the URL are your keywords appearing? The closer the key-word appears to the beginning, the better. For 2 reasons, 1. google's algorithm considers this, 2. a search result will even show the keyword in the URL below the results, for added assurance to the searcher.

ex. For the key word : baby food, would you choose?

1. domain.com/baby-food
2. domain.com/blog/baby-food
3. blog.domain.com/baby-food

I would probably select #1, with #3 just barely nudging out #2. Would like to see what the experts in this forum say on this.

And, depending on how important the keyword baby-food is to you, you can even name the sub-domain as follows: babyfood.domain.com

And if it is truly the centerpiece around which everything else is done, then you might want to go for babyfood.com, or babyfood.org (which is supposed to be better than the .com for SEO)

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But just note that wordpress will work with all of these options, and even though you may put the wordpress install in a subdirectory, you can still 'show it to the world' at the domain.com level.