I thought Pike was still a Captain during The Menagerie, but Memory Alpha says he was a Fleet Captain, which I guess is a billet and not an official rank?

SNW has played fast-and-loose with what was established in "The Menagerie" - Kirk does call Pike "Fleet Captain" at the beginning of the message, and goes on to tell Commodore Mendez that he met Pike when he was promoted to fleet captain. It's not explicitly stated, but the obvious implication is that this was the only time Kirk met Pike.

But, Pike has already been temporarily promoted to fleet captain, back in "Lost In Translation." He does indeed meet Jim Kirk in that episode, which basically fulfills what Kirk said in TOS. Obviously, they've met many times since then, but it doesn't technically break anything, even though it clearly wasn't the original intent back in "The Menagerie".

I thought I didn’t enjoy this season, but it turns out I actually did. So…there is that.

I actually think this will end up being a common opinion. For all the hand-wringing about the "gimmicks," I think every individual episode was...fine, at worst. And I would strongly recommend taking another look at "A Case of Chiaroscuro" some day - I think it's pretty top-tier.