Haruto is not all that bad. In many ways, he reminds me of a middle-school friend of mine who despite being an overall out-going guy, acts ridiculously awkward and stupid around the girl he likes, and always pretend to 'sound cool' in front of her in an indirect manner but often making a fool of himself more so than not. Teenagers, especially all-boys-school ones go through that phase a lot.
I say the main problem with his idiocy is his lack of subtlety, and how his stupidity carries on beyond acting like a dud even when he's not with notbitch!Suzuka. Even his dere-dere moments in the manga at the moment makes him look like an stupid angry boy with little communication, rather than the more subtly kind and gratitude endearing ones like Alto (( Macross Frontier )) or Tomoya (( Clannad )).
With the exception of the end of chapter 7, of course. And even that made him look like a twat.
(( I'm liking how this isn't going to be pretentiously focused on either cooking or baseball thus far, but I honestly would like to see Seo-sensei do a baseball manga one day. ))