Ash Ketchum has caught a total of 77 Pokemon (though 30 of them are all Tauros). With that many Pokemon dedicated to battling, there’s bound to be a hierarchy of skill, one way or another.
While it’s usually more fun to look at Ash’s best Pokemon for battling, this list will look from a perspective closer to the opposite of that. Some of Ash’s Pokemon have had expectations placed on them, unfair or otherwise, that they never managed to meet for one reason or another. These Pokemon in particular are the biggest disappointments in his roster, and are far from the first that come to mind when thinking about Ash’s strongest.
Updated October 20, 2021 by Kyle Laurel: Ash’s Journeys roster is coming along quite nicely, though it isn’t all butterflies and rainbows. His current rotation of six might be considered one of the best, but there have been some unexpectedly weak links.
13 Sirfetch’d
With Dragonite, Lucario, and Pikachu being the stars of Ash’s Journeys roster, some of his teammates are bound to get neglected a bit. That seems to be the case with Sirfetch’d, and hasn’t gotten much spin since evolving during its match against Rinto and his Gallade.
A slight problem with Ash’s Journeys team is an overlap of types, and that applies with Sirfetch’d sharing the Fighting-type with Lucario. While Ash’s success as a battler hasn’t necessarily suffered, that’s given him less reason to utilize Sirfetch’d, who, despite being somewhat weak as a Farfetch’d and clearly inferior to Lucario, is a solid battler in its own right.
12 Gengar
One of the two Journeys catches that broke the internet along with Dragonite, Gengar was primed to be one of Ash’s best members, being his first Ghost-type and having quite a unique battling skillset compared to Ash’s other Pokemon. While Dragonite has more than lived up to the hype, Gengar has been quite disappointing so far.
Gengar is in a similar boat with Sirfetch’d, not getting as much opportunity to show out. Unfortunately for Gengar, though, even in the battles where it’s appeared, it hasn’t performed as well as expected, already getting knocked out several times while only notching one official win.
11 Noctowl
While Ash’s Noctowl was far from terrible, it was kind of forgettable other than the fact it was shiny. Perhaps it’s that fact in particular that puts it on this list.
Having a certain distinction that no other Noctowl has, you would have been forgiven for expecting its power and battling prowess to follow suit. Alas, it’s merely decent as a battler, having a few nice wins under its belt but not really standing out as one of Ash’s strongest. Maybe it’s unfair to heighten one’s expectations of a shiny; this just proves that one special feature doesn’t make you special at everything.
10 Palpitoad
Aside from being the sole Pokemon for Ash’s “strategy” against Elesa, Palpitoad isn’t remembered much. That’s to be expected, as Ash barely used it in battles, aside from that and his battle against Stephan in the Unova League.
While it’s certainly a decent battler, it could’ve been much more if it were given the proper time and attention to develop. That wasn’t the case since Ash caught more than six Pokemon in Unova, forcing him to rotate between a few every so often. Perhaps that begs the question of whether or not he should have caught Palpitoad and so many others in the first place.
9 Noivern
While some of Ash’s usual suspects, namely Pikachu, Charizard, and Sceptile, have straight-up defeated Legendary Pokemon, Noivern came close to being on that list when he evolved from a Noibat and defended Ash and his Hawlucha from a raging Zapdos. While that’s great and all, Noivern has been merely OK at best since then.
In official battles, Noivern only has one win (Alain’s Metang) and one draw (Sawyer’s Salamence) under his belt, with the rest of his appearances in battles ending in knockouts. While he’s certainly a very determined Pokemon, he’s got a long way to go before he can live up to his potential.
8 Scraggy
Another victim of Ash’s Unova rotation logjam, this baby Pokemon showed potential in the few key battles it had. Scraggy had a decent showing in Brycen’s Gym and even helped Ash win a League match, but it wasn’t put out there enough to do more than that.
Scraggy could have been one of Ash’s best Fighting-types if he’d trained it up more. Having a strong personality and decent battling instincts could have been the tools to one of Ash’s best Unova Pokemon. If Scraggy had been caught earlier, maybe it would have had the time to develop into one of Ash’s best Pokemon from the region.
7 Boldore
Most Pokemon fans don’t even remember Ash had a Boldore, and it probably deserves more respect. For a Pokemon that became another victim of Ash’s widespread rotation, it’s far from a terrible battler.
You could even say it was a pretty good one, showing its best battling attributes in its battle against Clay’s Excadrill. While it wasn’t a total powerhouse, it was certainly more reliable than most of Ash’s other Pokemon in Unova. Its personality is quite like Ash’s, too, in that it’s incredibly caring for others. That makes it all the more confusing and disappointing why it wasn’t used more often.
6 Goodra
While Ash’s first fully-evolved pseudo-Legendary was a solid one, it isn’t really in the conversation for Ash’s best Pokemon. That’s a shame, because, well… it’s a pseudo-Legendary.
Part of the reason why is the lack of legitimate battles it had. Aside from being the MVP of Ash’s Gym battle against Clemont, it hasn’t really proved itself in any other key victories. Of course, once it had a chance to in the Kalos League, it showed tons of rust and buckled under the pressure in all its appearances. For its good attacking power, it couldn’t stay on the field long enough before getting knocked out.
5 Gible
Speaking of pseudo-Legendaries, Ash could have had a big, bad Garchomp if he’d put in the time to develop Gible. The problem is, he caught Gible way too late in his Sinnoh adventure for it to properly develop.
As a result, Gible was just a gimmicky replacement for Turtwig that could use Draco Meteor. While it can stand its ground in that role and even has an impressive victory against Conway under its belt, fervent fans of Garchomp can’t help but be disappointed. Ash eventually got a pseudo-Legendary with Goodra and later a really good one in Dragonite, but according to many, Gible should’ve been there first.
4 Unfezant
After catching two excellent regional birds, Swellow and Staraptor, in the previous regions, Ash followed that up in Unova with Unfezant. Unfortunately, she turned out to be one of his worst battlers.
Aside from her one shining moment after evolving in Ash’s battle against Skyla, Unfezant had a hard time racking up any wins. She couldn’t even beat Pokemon she had a type advantage against, such as Cameron’s Riolu. She was such a bad battler that Ash had her replaced in the middle of the season by his Charizard. Similarly, Ash’s subsequent regional bird catch, Talonflame, proved to be much better.
3 Torkoal
Speaking of Fire-types, Charizard and Talonflame are a far cry from Torkoal, who is down there along with Unfezant as one of Ash’s worst battlers. It was certainly kind on Ash’s part to take this weakling and try to raise it into something more powerful, but that hasn’t happened just yet.
Granted, it’s hard to train up a Pokemon that gets knocked out by a Thunder Wave. It also has multiple losses against favorable type matchups and been one-shotted multiple times despite its supposedly good defenses. Torkoal didn’t need to be a god-tier battler, but there was no good reason for the anime’s writers to make it this bad.
2 Pignite
Pignite was primed to be Infernape 2.0, with being a Fire/Fighting-type, having the sad backstory of being abandoned by a Trainer, and all. Unfortunately, one of Ash’s other Pokemon kind of ruined its development: Krookodile.
Once Krookodile officially joined Ash’s team, it was clear that it was stronger than most of his other Pokemon. That, in turn, took away the time they would’ve had to develop. That’s a shame, as perhaps with some more training, Pignite could’ve run the gamut and evolved into Emboar. It certainly would’ve become a much better battler in the process; Infernape wasn’t a star from the jump, either.
1 Torterra
For how bad Torterra has been since it fully evolved, it manages to top this list because he showed the most potential to be a good battler. As a Turtwig, it was very good, helping out Ash in multiple battles with its excellent speed.
Only, that was kind of the problem. Turtwig used speed to its advantage. When it evolved into Grotle and later Torterra, it couldn’t replicate that, try as it might. As a result, it barely won any battles, even after learning to rely more on defense from Paul’s much stronger Torterra. It also didn’t help that Infernape, Ash’s second Sinnoh starter, kind of stole Torterra’s thunder.
NEXT: All Unused Pokemon Type Combinations So Far, Ranked Worst To Best
