Being in the open with sunshine and air breezes hitting them is more important than how many in a cluster.
Healthy soil will do more for larger yield, size and quality than thinning BUT it does work for growing record size fruit so it may give you fewer but larger fruit.
I do remove all leaves up to about sixteen inches to two feet off of the ground and higher when they get larger.
More air circulation reduces disease problems and even though the leaves supply strength to the plant they also take energy for the plant to keep them there so as with trees, less is more, more or less, unless you have to work with Les Nessman.