Sure it can, and giving small miners the knowledge that they should add major miners as direct peers helps. We also have by default 8 two way peers and 2 one way peers. Those 2 one way peers are meant to be the high data transfer peers to help blocks get through the network faster.

However, if you're one of those smaller miners, those 2 one way peers don't exactly help the block that you found get to those bigger miners faster which again puts the smaller miners blocks at higher risk of getting orphaned.