62nd Cuban National Series: Las Tunas Sweep Industriales for a Second Title

The 62nd Cuban National Series was won by Las Tunas, who swept Industriales four games to none in a final that began on 5 August 2023. It was the second championship in the franchise’s history, after 2018–19, and the start of back-to-back titles — they won the 63rd as well.

It was also the season the Serie Nacional stopped being a winter league. This page carries the full record: standings, playoff results, the final, and the schedule graphics as the federation originally published them.

The season that moved to summer

For most of its history the Serie Nacional was a winter competition. The 62nd ran from 29 March to 3 July 2023 — a summer schedule, forced partly by the arrival of the six-team Elite League the previous autumn, and delayed a further week so Cuba could celebrate its fourth-place finish at the World Baseball Classic.

Sixteen teams were scheduled for 75 games each, though not every club completed the full card — three finished on 73 or 74. The top six qualified for the Elite League that followed.

Final regular-season standings

What the table says

Two things stand out, and neither is in the headline. The first is how tightly packed the middle was: seven clubs finished within two games of each other, from Artemisa in third at 41–34 to Mayabeque in ninth at 39–36. Nine of the sixteen teams finished within six and a half games of first place. For a league routinely described as having two or three serious contenders, the 62nd was close to a coin toss from third place down.

The second is Granma. They had won the 61st series the previous June, and the copy written at the time — including on this site — called it a dynasty. One season later they finished twelfth at 35–39, four games under .500 and ten behind Las Tunas. Nothing about the roster was supposed to fall apart that fast. It is the clearest single illustration in the standings of what continuous player departures do to a Cuban club: a title-winning team can be a below-.500 team inside a year, without anything else changing.

Set against that, Las Tunas — the Leñadores, from one of the smaller eastern provinces — won the regular season, went 12–2 across three playoff rounds, and did it with the players they started with. They then won the 63rd as well.

The playoffs

The final: a sweep, and no reinforcements

Las Tunas won the title in four straight, closing it out 6–1. Alejandro Meneses started the clincher and gave up two hits across five scoreless innings; Yordanis Alarcón hit a two-run home run in the ninth; Yosvany Alarcón led the postseason in runs driven in; Rodolfo Díaz came out of the bullpen to force the double plays that ended two innings.

The detail worth keeping is how they did it. OnCubaNews reported that Las Tunas won sin refuerzos — without reinforcements. Cuban clubs have at times been permitted to add players from eliminated teams for the postseason, a practice with no equivalent in the North American game and one that has decided more than one Serie Nacional. Las Tunas took the 62nd with the roster they finished the regular season with.

The full fixture list

All 120 subseries matchups of the 62nd Serie Nacional classification round, transcribed from the federation’s published graphics. The Home club column is the host; every one of the 120 rows was checked against the stadium it names, and all 120 resolve.

The structure is a single complete round-robin. Sixteen teams, fifteen subseries, and every club plays every other club exactly once — 16 × 15 ÷ 2 = 120 matchups, with no repeats. At five games per subserie that is the 75-game season. The odd-numbered subseries (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15) each carried a doubleheader, which is how a four-day subserie still produced five games.

The published schedule

The graphics below are the schedule as the Cuban federation released it before the season, kept here as the original record. They are the published card, not the played one — rain, doubleheaders and makeups moved games, which is why three clubs finished on fewer than 75.

These graphics are unusually easy to read, and worth saying so: unlike the 64th-series schedule, they carry explicit Estadio / Visitador / Home-club column headers, so the host is stated rather than inferred. Every one of the 120 rows checks out against the stadium it names.

More on Cuban baseball

• Cuban National Series: every team, 1961 to today
• The 65th Serie Nacional: format, groups and key dates
• The 64th Serie Nacional schedule
• Cuban baseball: the whole picture

Sources: standings from beisbolencuba.com; season structure and playoff results cross-checked against Wikipedia’s 2023 Cuban National Series record; final and semi-final detail from OnCubaNews and Acento.

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