Joe...
If I understand your question correctly, you are positing that the large commercial short position is a lock in of current high gold prices. That is possible, but in the sense of a hedge, because it would have to be against a long physical position in gold itself, not a futures position.
I would normally assume that a relatively high percentage of the commercial short position includes hedges by those miners that do hedging, and those contracts would be rolled over until they are eventually covered by delivering physical gold the company has mined in the course of its business. That being the case, the pressure to cover the hedges is not as immediate since the miners consider the gold to be under contract for delivery at a specific price. The rub would come if the longs began to take delivery on their open contracts, forcing the sellers (hedgers) to deliver immediately rather than at their leisure. That would force them to either buy gold on the open market or purchase offsetting futures contracts to deliver against the call. Either way would drive the price of gold sharply higher, but most of the purchases would have to be made in the cash market.
Hope that makes sense.
mlsoft
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