Your question isn't new, I haven't participated in the boards for a while but there's always something being said about HI instruction. You can find old message threads where the older video of Rich and the boy is used as an example of dumping the barrel. It seems to me that's not the intention. It seems the focus of the drills are for feel and to get a better visual of the relationship of hands and forearms. I won't win any technical arguments and I am not an instructor, just a dad.
Anyway, where you may see a similarity between what Rich is showing and what the high level hitters are doing is establishing early rearward acceleration (though not everyone will say that happens or agrees upon how) and maintaining something of an equidistant relationship between the forearms. Once you take the more vertical drill and turn it more diagonal to horizontal, in a plane parallel with the shoulder rotation, like a swing, it may make more sense?
