I disagree quite strongly with what Yosey Goldstein is saying here. Only someone who has first read the Torah carefully, with close attention to its details and its themes, and with great emotional receptivity to its values and sentiments will truly appreciate the genius of scriptures and the great commentators like Rashi. Surely even Yosey Goldstein must believe that there is a spiritual impact to reading the text directly and wrestling with it personally.
Commentaries are absolutely necessary to a full understanding.
But putting the Commentaries aside from time to time and just confronting the text directly is just as necessary. Even when giving the innovative approach it is firmly anchored in the truth of Torah. To come up with some explanation on a posuk that is not rooted in the Torah truth is not just a waste of time, but it may be dangerous. What happens if someone else takes the offered explanation and expands on it and based on that Pshat come up with some theory that could be totally contradictory to Torah thought, or it could even be heretical. Again, I think everyone is aware of Bill Moyers' PBS special on Genesis where he expounds on totally perverted explanation of Genesis.