In reply to GrahamD:
Does it though? Let's look at the latest Giro, which was won by 46 seconds (a somewhat tight margin). Even if sunweb had taken a sprinter, and presuming the existing 10 bonus seconds for a stage win was mirrored across the entire team, they would still have needed five stage wins to overhaul Froome/Sky, presuming that sky didn't pick up a single bonus second in this fashion (which they almost certainly would try to do).
Back to the OP: I liked 9 man teams and never saw an issue with them. N=1 and all that, but 8 man teams didn't make much difference in the Giro on the face of it.