I think part of the problem is with the role system as a whole. If you look at the class tab both on lodestone and in game, there are three tabs for DPS. These are melee, physical ranged, and magical ranged. As role actions are tied to these groups, red mage must fit into one of them. In the current iteration, red mage is in the ranged magical role. This means that it is required to primarily provide ranged, casted magical damage and it's given role actions to support this (e.g. swiftcast, surecast).

I feel that the reason the current red mage has far more caster than melee in in part due to this.

It could be argued that they'd be better off in the melee role, but there are issues with this as well. Firstly, samurai already launched along side it as a melee job, and I believe that they didn't want to introduce two jobs in the same role in the same expansion. There's also the added issue that the mana based role actions are all attached to the ranged magic dps and healer roles.