Pancake isn't useless...having it at 8 or 10 when you've only put 6 SPs into it, while you're also getting a big strength bonus is pretty nice. If you're actually agile enough to get your hands on most of the "speed" DEs (and I assume you are now, because my OT is), pancaking them on runs should prevent them from shedding and turning to make diving tackles or tackles from behind. Of course this is more theory than practice.
I agree with you that pancakes appear to be utterly worthless, and it is a shame that if you want to test it at 10 you have to take a risk and put SP in there.
Still worth hanging onto though - maybe there will be a change in pancake formula in the future, so you get less against gutted teams and actually a few against the teams when it really counts.