I think this is a good point. He hits the ball hard enough that he'd still hit the ball plenty far with a flatter swing. And to all fields since it takes some of the timing out of the equation since his bat would be in the zone longer to get to some of the pitches he hasn't timed out correctly.
My question would be, is his miss % in the zone related to only to how long the bat is in the zone? How much of that is him pulling off of the ball with his head, taking his eyes off of it in the process. No idea how to measure that, but I've always wondered that with him. When he makes good contact, you see his head and eyes following the ball out. When he misses, he's looking into the 3B dugout.