Surely how it hit the water, and what caused the damage seen is really of little matter.
It may or may not indicate if there was any control at the time it hit the water, but again, that won't help find the cause.
What is needed is the reason that caused the loss of control (not pointing to pilot involvement or not) at some 30k feet above the damage being looked at.
Maybe this is why they are not too worried about the "hacking up" of the wreckage?
My impression is that 'losing control at high altitude' would happen more often (probability wise and statistically), than things getting 'out of control' ( either by weather events (that's one reason why we have pilots who can put things right), or SA loss leading to a flip like the 747 years ago (where the pilot provided both cause and solution, albeit after a significant drop) ). If that is so, then you would have to divide the flight path in altitude steps, call it a 'ladder'. And ask for each step of the ladder what happens, and what the pilots' options are. Like posters do in the interesting stall discussions here. And that also includes the final splash. The whole plane hitting the water or large separate sections ... that points to different possible causes. Which you test by going up the ladder again. Both top and bottom of the ladder are relevant for 'solving' this accident.
On hacking up. Nobody knows what the cause was. Real hacking up would not start until after reading and analyzing the recorders and the investigation being further along the line. The only reason for hacking up now would be transportation requirements (bridges, roadwidth ..etc ... the diameter of the fuselage is 4.14 m ... one lane on western highways is something like 3 m...isn't it?)