Ingame Claydol sucks. It has no offensive presence, doesn't learn Earthquake by level up (meaning you'd have to waste your incredibly valuable Earthquake TM on it in order to give it that STAB), learns no good level up moves, and its movepool isn't that great either. I'd also argue that it has pretty bad ingame typing, since you don't need to resist Edgequake ingame. And this was the time before resisting Fighting really did anything.