A value of the wrong type passed forward because it's almost the right type can cause errors that make their way into production.
I hear you say "so unit test your code!", and to that I reply, we're a c# shop that has only recently started pushing some of our code to the client. If you can convince management that we should shift our paradigm to allow for the time to write tests that don't add much to the sprint we're in, I can send you their email address.
The fact is, a large portion of unit tests solve the same problems that strong types solve.