There is also an other reason for not wasting "a single byte":

Branches are the only Jumps with condition. So, when you have a far destination that is more than 127 bytes away, you have to do that:

   want to do:
            BCS far_dest

   Have to do:
            BCC no_jump
            JMP far_dest
    no_jmp: ...

So, when you wasted to many "single bytes", you may end up up adding 3 Bytes and at least 3 cycles to your conditional jumps.