Yes, because request methods provide a uniform way of communicating meaningful information to HTTP infrastructure like caches. If a request uses the DELETE meth

Yes, because request methods provide a uniform way of communicating meaningful information to HTTP infrastructure like caches. If a request uses the DELETE method then a cache in the middle can know something about the meaning of that request (e.g. it's idempotent) and change its behaviour accordingly. If that information lives only in the URI then there's no way for a cache to understand its significance.