Yeah, base stats rock.
And apparently there is no reason to keep pikachu from evolving after you like the moves, ain't like the olden days at all, nope.
And stats can drop sometimes, nincada has more defense than ninjask, and murkrow and scyther are faster until they evolve too. But it's almost always better to evolve later, so 48 is good. I should have let my shiny ponyta evolve at 50... Gonna have to send it to 100 eventually now.