[Chris is me]

Without having seen your matches I can only go off of what's in the post, but here are some things I would say:

An inbounder is a fairly valuable robot that surprisingly few teams could play well. Specializing in that role is probably a good idea for your team. Not being able to throw at all is honestly not a big downside if you can effectively pick up off the ground and spit it out. Only two robots need any ability to throw on an alliance.

Your goalie mechanism has a potentially very important use case that could make it stand out - the autonomous mode. You are at best going to put up 11 points in auton, which is less than the 15+ points a blocker can take out of the equation. The positioning rules for goalies are not in your favor but that doesn't mean it's impossible to have your robot move into an ideal position once autonomous begins. Doing this and being a quality inbounder will make your robot a great second pick at nearly any event this year.

I would not focus too much energy on catching over the truss. It is a fairly high risk, fairly low reward strategy that is easily defended. Use your catching strengths to pick up from a human player and spit into another robot.

I would not definitely say that scouts were not looking for inbounders this year. That is possible and maybe even likely, but a team would have to be foolish to assemble an alliance of three goal scorers without regard for the dynamics of the game. I can absolutely assure you that top teams are looking for robots that can play defense, human load, and spit out for a second round pick.

I will say that if you played the way you described and your intake reliably got the ball off the ground that you would have been a strong contender for a second pick at the regional my team competed at recently.