You're missing the point. One attempt is enough when there's a pre-auth exploit.

it still doesn't prevent your logs getting filled up with crap is my point.

Preventing logs from filling up is quite a cosmetic issue. Making the box hard to crack is certainly more relevant.

Note that I'm not advocating against a port change; just saying that it's the very last of available options, as it's essentialy security-by-obscurity, and thus only gives you a feeling of higher security (due to less spam in the logs).

Making security logs usable can (note the word) be a very important part of a security setup. Lots of people don't have the bandwidth to pay attention to noisy log files to look for anomalies.