>>27439423Not so much that he wouldn't be worth stealing, as it is pikachu evolving would have hit them in their pride. After all, they've spent years chasing this one pikachu, under the belief that it was a special Pokemon, one that is far more powerful than any raichu. Now, we know that the real reason was that pikachu had been supercharged in that episode, but they don't know that. So for team rocket, seeing pikachu be forced to evolve in order to defeat another Pokemon means that it was never worth stealing in the first place. Which means they just wasted a fuckton of time for nothing, when they could have been it doing something else.