Nick Punto is Ass on Toast.
There. Now, if everything on this blog ends up being so easy, I'm going to have no problem writing a few columns about the Twins. Right? Of course, if you're here, and if you like the Twins, you probably feel the same way I do about Mr. Punto. So I suppose taking such an easy angle--beating up on a guy who had one of the all-time worst seasons at the plate for a starter last year--won't exactly wake anyone up. Then again, since I assume nobody's reading this anyway (yet--I plan to be an enormous success sometime between now and my death), it probably doesn't matter to me.
But Punto and his defenders do matter to me in a very integral way. Any single person, armed with the knowledge of what stats show us--both the basic ones employed by the baseball mainstream and the deep-dive numbers that true fanatics like myself seek out--will recognize that, without argument, Nick Punto is a giant bag of douche that sucked win after win away from the Twins last year while also sucking at-bat after at-bat away from better hitters (for instance, the other 24 guys on the team).
And yet every now and then, while going about my day job, devoid of emotion because work mostly drains me of my will to interact/live, I'll see some clown (normally a girl, for whatever reason) wearing a Punto jersey, apparently either unaware that he does nothing but hurt her favorite team or too apathetic about sports to care--in which case, why the jersey?--and I'll just fill with something less than "rage" but at least a healthy couple of anger-units ahead of "annoyance."
This is my theme, here, although I probably should've mentioned it earlier: I want to know why the hell people think they're bigger fans of a baseball team simply because they love the guys who unequivocally suck at the game.
Okay, so I've heard the platitudes about--well, I suppose we're already using Punto as a reference, so I'll stick with him--how much heart his has and how hard he plays. The sad truths, though, are that no amount of heart can make up for the fact that he can no better lay down a bunt than he can actually find himself standing on base with a hit, and the one thing that he does harder than play is suck.
That's not an opinion, and casual fans would do well to remember that. I'm not coming at you with something that would hold one bit of controversy if you either (a) follow baseball or (b) watch nearly any single game in which Nick Punto is a contestant. It's mind-boggling to me, but Punto's fanbase seems to be entirely made up of people who aren't fans of baseball.
Hating Nick Punto and wishing he wasn't playing for the Twins doesn't make me less of a fan of the team. Hating Nick Punto and recognizing that the greatest thing that he could do for our team is leave it makes me more qualified to be a fan of this team than most any casual watcher. Oh, believe me, I want for him not to suck. I want him to be able to hit and, barring that, to be able to bunt people ahead because he can't. But he's unable to do either of those things, both of which are extremely integral to good hitting. I want to ignore, like most casual fans do, that his fielding isn't as good as advertised because of his limited range. But I can't, because I know how not to. Perhaps ignorance would be bliss but ignorance, unfortunately, is something I don't have much of when it comes to the game of baseball (as for the business of baseball, that's a much different story, and maybe another few columns).
Slavishly loving everyone who comes to this team would mark my total acceptance of unchanging mediocrity, and even after the acquisitions of Juan Castro, Ramon Ortiz, Sidney Ponson, Livan Hernandez and the tons who came before them, I'm not willing to settle and say "well, they'll probably have a career revival" or even "yeah, they might be with the team for over a couple months before we cut their dead-weight asses."
I want to make this perfectly clear: there is no better way to prove that you're a true fan of your favorite team than by despising its awful players. And in Punto's case, since he's been around for what seems like a couple decades, there's no excuse to still like him, and to assume he'll ever again repeat his okayish fluke 2006 season.
I love the Twins; therefore, I hate Nick Punto.
And with any luck, that'll be the most self-satisfied, arrogant, presumptuous thing I ever write here. But I wouldn't hold my breath.
