BABIP and Player Styles

Often times, the analysis on this, and many sabermetrics inclined sites, rely heavily  on batting average on balls in play (BABIP) to indicate luck in a hitters profile. Peter has done extensive work on BABIP and batted balls, but I wanted to take a different look at the concept. My focus was not on what components weighed heavily in BABIP, but rather what player types, if any, conveyed unnatural BABIPs. Generalizations about styles like three true outcome hitters and speedsters are usually made in the context of a conversation about BABIP, are those stereotypes true, or simply misconceived?

The only overall qualifications were: active post-1980 and 5,000+ plate appearances. Here are the player styles tested:

Three True Outcomes (Top 50 were tested)
Essentially 3TO types are the players who either walk, strikeout, or hit a homerun in a disproportional amount of plate appearances. Think Jim Thome, Mark McGwire, Pat Burrell, or even Jay Buhner. These players are bulkier, slower, defenseless, and possess what Bill James labeled "Old player skills", although they're not always old.

Speedsters (Top 50 were tested)
This category is exactly what you're thinking it consists of. These guys don't hit homeruns, but do steal bases, and generally make good usage of their speed in the field. Rickey Henderson, Vince Coleman, Kenny Lofton, and Trot  Otis Nixon are grouped here.

The Non-Three True Outcomes (Top 50 were tested)
Exact opposite of 3TO. Juan Pierre, Placido Polanco, Lance Johnson, and Rey Sanchez don't tend to homer, walk, or strikeout.

Now, on to the results.

3TO% BABIP R2: 0.232
3TO% BABIP standard deviation: 0.02
3T0% AVG BABIP: 0.302
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SPD BABIP R2: 0.0017
SPD BABIP standard deviation: 0.018
SPD AVG BABIP: 0.309
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N3T BABIP R2: 0.0173
N3T BABIP standard deviation: 0.017
N3T AVG BABIP: 0.299

Through all of that, there's not much of a trend here. Generally, hitter BABIP falls between .290-.310, as each of the averages, and most of the ranges do. Each style has its own outliers, like Ichiro, Bobby Abreu, Greg Vaughn, and Don Baylor, but there's not enough here for us to estimate who or what makes for those kind of breaks. This hardly the definitive post on BABIP and player styles, and you could make the case that speed scores should've been used rather than stolen bases, however I'm just attempting to provide a general idea, and at this point it seems to be that there is no BABIP specialization.