It's not so silly... the two mods have different designed goals. Auto is designed to show a perfect play, so maxing the spinner out is most appropriate.
Spun-out just wants to complete the spinners... it's not there to make the rest of the map easier for you by giving you spins at the top rate, it wants to give you something closer to giving you the spinners completed in a mediocre, average player way, so that you don't get the meter cranked up for free every spinner. And with high drain, that means that you have to deal with the health you lose, but that's the penalty you pay for not having to spin at all... you get weak spins instead. (Actually, it might be interesting if spinning was optional with Spun-out... take the 286 on spinners you don't want to do by keeping your hands off, but you still can hold down a button and do the spinning yourself if you want to. Which would be a way of addressing the issue in this thread.)
Calculating a balanced rate spinner is a different design choice... instead of pretending that you spun an average spinner, it essentially tries to present the map as if the spinners don't exist (well, except for scoring). Both are valid approaches, but they aim for slightly different goals.