There's no indication of whether this strategy will change in the future, but it's still insisting it will continue work on new features once the game is "on stable footing." Finally, in something that will probably affect all players, it confirmed that a bug is causing an increase in the odds of escape and omitting the XP bonus, so you're not imagining it -- those Pidgeys and Rattatas really are harder to catch than they should be. It's working on a fix, but there's no word yet on when it will roll out, so you may want to save your Pokéballs when and where you can.

Trainers, a new bug affecting throw accuracy increases the odds of escape and omits the XP bonus. We are working on a fix, stay tuned... — Pokémon GO (@PokemonGoApp) August 4, 2016