I lol'd because I never looked at it that way.
It just makes sense. Why ditch a fully evolved, strong (though most people posting are probably American-only watchers, which explains why they can see it's so weak. They're still just seeing it evolve...) Pokemon for a baby that has a lot of hype and very little otherwise? Besides, Riolu has the most ass evolution method in history, from an anime standpoint. (Ingame, I found an interesting way to max happiness that got me a level 26 Crobat; get a move that something is immune to -Ground and Ghost work best- and run into a Pokemon in the wild. Spam the move repedately until your health gets low, run, then spam regular Potions. Your happiness skyrockets if you do this. =])
Still, the idea of a Riolu in Ash's team is also silly. In the Ranger episodes, I could see the connection, but honestly, I was too busy thinking of how much I wanted to kick J in the box. >=|