Mini raises, is there a place for them?

[Percula]

I had a tough table for a little part of my 16hr session yesterday playing 5-150 spread limit. In seats 3, 4 are fulltime pro's (playing live is their income) both are excellent players. I am in seat 5, seat 6 is a successful player good and thinking, seat 9 is also a winning 40+ limit player.

The rest of the table was donks, calling station types. I was seeing a lot of mini raises from the donks, until this hand came up which made start to think...

Seat 6 is in CO and raises to $50 (about double the standard) and it folds to seat 9 the BB who calls.

It goes HU to an ace high flop, A83r. BB leads for $100, CO mini-raises to $200, BB RR another $150 (max bet) and asks CO if he just wants to get it AI. CO flashes me AQs and mucks. BB goes to muck after getting the pot pushed and one of the donks asks to see the hand, and of course the dealer flips 88 for middle set.

After the hand I talked to seat 6 about it. He too hates mini raises. But in this hand against a fairly solid aggressive player his thinking was that his mini raise would either be called meaning that seat 9 had an ace with a decent kicker and could reevaluate on the turn. Or if he was up against a set which was a logical hand range for seat 9 he would be played back at aggressively allowing him to get away fairly cheaply.

A orbit or so later I see the same line used by seat 3 vs seat 4 in a set over set hand.

A hand or so later I used it in reverse on seat 6 with my KK on a ace high flop. I lead for PSB he mini raised and I RR max and offered an AI, he mucked.

Now granted these are not the best players in the world and the situation was pretty specific to the players in the hands. But it seems like the line has some merit especially reversing it.

Thoughts?