Yes it does!
But optimal scumplay involves holding (lowish-)middle-of-the-road
influence
over the day.
The two should not be confused as being synonymous.
You can control how the game goes as a lurker.
You cannot influence how the game goes as a lurker.
Optimal scum play involves controlling the day, and we largely accomplished that. Very specifically, we were keeping things from heading in one particular direction. (For instance, one influence on our nightkills? Keeping the number of players with scumreads on scum balanced--specifically, many players scumread 2/3 scum and townread a third, just having WHICH 2/1 be different. We wanted to keep it from becoming too unanimous, since if everyone agreed on two correct scumreads even if the third was wrong, then that town unity would be devastating and by and large we kept that from happening, which was my main concern.)
There were certain things we couldn't control, this is true. Heartless had very strong influence on MoI/zefiend being scum, and that was not something we could safely challenge. (Going for a 3-man win would likely have ensured that the town won.) But we controlled more than we did not control, even though we influenced a whole lot less. From the get-go, we were in control of the game. The Pine guilty fucked that control up, but it didn't remove it altogether. It just made it so that we had to work harder to actively maintain the gamestate we wanted.