As stated earlier, the docs say it isn't needed to run this that often.But what definitely does benefit the server is running analyze.
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/analyze-table.html
In the optimize section they said optimize is mapped to analyze. Idon't know if that means analyze is done along with optimize, butanalyze can by itself make mysql do a quicker job returning data injoins and the difference can at times be dramatic.