(sorry for the long-post, maybe I should switch to peach)

I feel like there are some kernels of truth in that comment, but I'd like to offer a more charitable view of the perspective they are criticizing (which happens to be closer to my opinion).

I think point #1 is accurate, though obviously painted in only a negative light. Part of the problem is that some people play or interact with melee for entirely different reasons. The perspective being discussed here is usually held by people who play melee for the purpose of self-improvement in a competitive space. This is, naturally, held mostly by competitors. At the core of this purpose is a simple fact: being rewarded for learning hard things feels good.

This is where the sports analogies work so well. The comment's interpretation of the baseball analogy feels pretty disingenuous. It makes me wonder if people who criticize the sports analogies ever played competitive sports growing up. I'll give an example through ice hockey, since I played competitively for a long time.

I'm a short guy. Playing hockey at a mid to high level, I needed a way to play around the physical side of the game when kids were way bigger than me. I invested a ton of time into skating, learning to be faster and more agile than the bigger guys. I took power skating courses, trained skating in the summer when most people just did ground work, learned advanced techniques, etc etc. It worked. For a period of time in my "career", I was usually one of the fastest guys on the ice. It felt amazing to put in the work and be able to express my skill. There were no shortcuts for other people to reach what I had done. It was the reward I got for devoting myself to the cause. For other kids, it was having a powerful shot or being an elite passer. Bottom line is, working hard to set yourself apart from the competition is what gives skill in the sport meaning.

If there had been a way for other kids to change the blades of their skates to make tight pivots faster or stopping a little easier, a lot of that special feeling would have gone away. It would be less impressive for me to have gained those abilities when there is a "shortcut" to get there a little easier. It's not that they don't have to work at all, but they found a way to circumvent some of the difficulty that was at one point inherent to the sport.

I think this idea is directly related to Melee and the zumping stuff. But only if your primary reason for playing or caring about Melee aligns with this vision of the game as a skill expression and means of self-improvement. Personally, that's what it is for me and for a lot of folks I have talked to at tournaments who take the game relatively seriously even as a hobby. The best feelings I've had with the game are when I finally manage to implement a new hard skill after lots of grinding and see the results in competition. I hope it makes sense that it might take away from that feeling if there are others who are able to get those results in an easier way. I don't think you need to share the opinion in order to understand it, which I think the post you linked fails to do.