It's not about hammering a team or not. No-one can blame Arsenal for hammering a team. If I was their fan, I'd always prefer that over scoring 2 goals and then preserving energy and wasting time. The fans would prefer their favorite club to score 6 than to score 2 goals so the players' job is to satisfy the fan base.
The problem is that there are too many teams in the EPL that can be hammered by Arsenal or Chelsea, even more, teams that can be hammered by Tottenham or the 6th and 7th best EPL team.
As things stand right now, 20 teams is too much for the EPL.
I'm simply talking from my perspective, though. There are millions of fans who just want to watch goals and goals and goals and who'd be happy to watch an 8:0 match week after week. Personally I don't want to follow watching a match between Chelsea and Blackpool if Chelsea are leading 3:0, but many, and there are really many football fans who'd like to watch a big team hammering a minor team. It's all up to the taste of the individual.
Actually, I think that I'm in the minority here, so teams like Barca, Chelsea, Arsenal etc are simply giving the majority what it expects from them.