Well, I also watched some other slice of life anime before like K-ON! and Nichijou, and I enjoyed them so I was fine with SM comedy as well. I'm not really battle obsessed, I'm looking for original/different interactions between humans/pokemons, which is why the baseball and pokemon swap episodes were memorable to me.
As for XY(Z), I wasn't really concerned about Team Rocket, since I started watching fully from that saga, so my mind was more fresh and can handle them. However, I was more concerned about how the cast were priotized by the producers/writers since I see them more often than TRio imo. And I get involved into discussions about the status quo and Serena, in which it seems people are making alot of arguments about them.