I remembered an interesting article about the effect of backspin on hitting from Fan Graphs.
To summarize - balls hit with higher degrees of backspin tended to outperform others...they travelled further and resulted in a higher BABIP (batting average on ball in play).
However, players who more frequently hit balls with high backspin actually underperformed their peers overall.
The explanation seems to be that high rates of backspin are associated with successfully hit balls, but that its hard to hit balls that way so players who use this approach have a lesser BABIP.
(Not offering any opinion of my own, just providing link)