Here's a little story about Dutch cycling.
Dutch cycling used to be pretty all round, with classics contenders, sprinters, echelon specialists, time trialists, water carriers, clinicians and gc contenders. Dutch cycling was actually quite successful, despite barely winning any tour stages in the last decade, it still occupies the number four spot in the country ranking of stage wins. Then a disaster happened: globalization*. That triggered specialization, specialization motivated by the stakes of sponsors and attention scope of the media. That specialization was "The Tour" and the only thing that really counts in the tour is the battle for the GC. Robert Gesink will probably never podium in the Tour, but that does not matter, as he reaps attention for him, his team and, most importantly, those who pay him and his team, the sponsors.
His attack during the first mountain stage shows me he can probably win stages, but he won't. Stages don't cut it in the Netherlands. No offence to those screaming for or demanding stage hunting, as a fan I agree, but Lars Boom's stage win last year barely gets him or his team any sorts of continuous media attention. Gesink's top-10 does just that, he's the talk of the day, his team is featured broadly on national television and the big media websites.
From the point of view of a professional team, it's much easier and more likely to produce a top-10 rider in the tour than it would be to produce a rider that reliably wins stages at the tour, say a top tier sprinter like Kittel or Greipel, so Rabobank (LottoNL-Jumbo) choose that. Sure, they mess around with sprinters, too (Hofland), but those riders are not the focus of their development plan.
So, why fight for seventh? Well, because it matters, maybe not for some of the cycling fans on this board, but it does for the general public, the media and the sponsors.
Is there hope? Yes, there is some hope. However, the big hope of other cyclings specializations in the Netherlands, Giant-Alpecin, recently switched allegiances, changing their base country to Germany. I think they have an excellent development track for non-GC specialists, but expect them to start focussing more on young German riders and less on young Dutch riders. (Which would be a good move as Germany is not really claimed by any other team at the moment, while the Netherlands is partially dominated by TLJ.)
* Maybe not globalization in itself, but the effect it had on team policies.