I guess I'm missing something here.

I think your point is that with a TP award you are "essentially" converting 50K points into 60K miles. Correct? If so, note that a straight transfer of points to miles would normally require 140K MR points to get 50K miles (or 60K with the bonus.) So the TP award provides a fairly nice savings considering you are getting both the hotel award and the miles.

Also, you picked the lowest miles option for a TP award. The big benefit of this award is getting the airline miles at a 1-to-1 points-to-miles ratio. Thus the biggest benefit would be seen when converting 270K points into 120K miles (145K with the 25K bonus.)

If you tried to do a straight points to miles convertion, it would take about 350K MR points to get that same 120K miles. And don't forget that a straight convertion does NOT includes any hotel award certs. So the top end TP award saves 80K points PLUS throws in a nice 7 night hotel award.