For the majority of the péloton "making the race" is their most realistic approach for victory, because if everybody sat in and conserved energy and the strongest won at the last every day it'd be a pretty boring sport. You also don't take into account different team's goals. A lot of teams realistically cannot expect victory, and therefore have the combination of constant attacks hoping they get into the right move that either the bunch miscalculates or, especially in stage races, allows to go as it's not a threat, and the knowingly-pointless day-long escapades that get the sponsor value for money (take Andalucía-CajaSur riders like José António López Gil, Jesús Rosendo or Javier Abeja who would often get the call to go out alone, because that day the team had nobody viable to win but they still wanted to get the team to be a talking point. But those are the only times somebody goes out solely to make the race, not trying to make the race as their main plan for winning it.
Of course it helps when you're a multi-talent like Sagan, Valverde, Gilbert, Bettini, van Avermaet, or even those rouleur/sprinter hybrids like Kristoff, as you can both win the race (well, place well in it in van Avermaet's case of course) by making it or win the race by sitting on depending on the day. But those types of riders are few in number. There are a lot of riders who have thrown away a large amount of their potential results because of a fear of exhausting themselves making moves. Dan Martin is an example of a guy who has done the opposite. He's won two monuments, and especially Lombardia was because he was the only gambler left (except maybe Wellens who had already played his cards). The only time he's actually been the strongest in a monument was the derided 2014 LBL where he crashed on the final corner. Gerrans has maximised his palmarès in some ways by being the poster boy for negative racing, which is one thing, but he's also paid the price (notoriously in Ponferrada) for the fact that his racing strategy requires others to race just as negatively, so when they don't and he refuses to contribute - then moans in the press that he had the legs but didn't get to sprint for the win - he gets rightly criticized. Valverde garners a lot of criticism because in the biggest races he becomes quite negative, but in smaller races he is often one of the prime agitators; he is able to get away with it to a great extent because his sprint-from-the-climb-reduced-bunch/sprint-on-a-hill is almost unparalleled in recent years.
Or think about the great show that was the Giro '74. We think of that final week as being a duel between Fuente and Merckx from a lot of the footage, but the real threats to Eddy were Baronchelli and Gimondi; Fuente was only 5th overall, but he was increasingly desperately trying to win back the time he lost in Sanremo, and since climbing was the only area he held the cards, long-distance solo climbing raids were his only stylistic choice. He made the race and his escapades are in many circumstances more fondly remembered than how close the battle for the GC actually got towards the end.
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