Cuba’s 60th Serie Nacional did not so much end as finally run out of postponements. Ten weeks after the playoffs opened, on 4 April 2021, Granma beat Matanzas 6–5 to take the championship series four games to two — the second national title in the Alazanes’ history, and the first won in a stadium with no crowd in it.
The 2020–21 season is the strangest in the tournament’s modern history. The regular season was a single 75-game round robin among all sixteen provinces. The postseason that followed was repeatedly stopped by positive Covid tests, to the point where two teams played the first game of a best-of-five on 26 January and the second on 28 February. What follows is the full bracket, game by game, with the results reconciled against the Cuban record.
A postseason played around the virus
The top eight finishers in the round robin advanced to best-of-five quarterfinals, seeded one through eight. Under normal conditions that round takes ten days. In 2021 it took six weeks, because the four series were never in step with one another.
Granma and Industriales started on schedule on 26 January and finished on 3 February. Pinar del Río swept Sancti Spíritus in five days. Matanzas, the defending champions, did not play a postseason game until 12 February. And the Las Tunas–Santiago de Cuba series, which opened alongside Granma’s on 26 January, then stopped dead: game two was not played until 28 February, a gap of thirty-three days. Santiago won the opener and then lost three straight to a Leñadores side that had spent a month waiting.
Quarterfinals
| Series | Result | Games |
|---|---|---|
| Granma v Industriales | Granma 3–2 | 26 Jan I 5–4 · 28 Jan G 3–0 · 30 Jan G 4–0 · 1 Feb I 10–3 · 3 Feb G 2–1 |
| Pinar del Río v Sancti Spíritus | Pinar del Río 3–0 | 27 Jan P 9–7 · 29 Jan P 15–4 · 31 Jan P 9–8 |
| Matanzas v Cienfuegos | Matanzas 3–0 | 12 Feb M 9–6 · 14 Feb M 11–4 · 16 Feb M 11–2 |
| Las Tunas v Santiago de Cuba | Las Tunas 3–1 | 26 Jan S 7–4 · 28 Feb LT 3–0 · 2 Mar LT 7–0 · 4 Mar LT 10–2 |
Two things stand out. Granma needed all five games to get past Industriales, and won the decider 2–1. And Las Tunas, once their series restarted, did not concede a run for eighteen innings.
Semifinals
Both semifinals were best-of-seven, and both went six games. They were played a fortnight apart, again because of the quarterfinal backlog: Granma and Pinar del Río were done by 27 February, while Matanzas and Las Tunas did not start until 7 March.
Granma 4, Pinar del Río 2
| Game | Date | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 20 Feb | Granma 9–2 |
| 2 | 21 Feb | Pinar del Río 13–3 |
| 3 | 23 Feb | Granma 12–1 |
| 4 | 24 Feb | Pinar del Río 5–3 |
| 5 | 25 Feb | Granma 12–4 |
| 6 | 27 Feb | Granma 13–3 |
Nothing about this series was close. Five of the six games were decided by four runs or more, and Granma scored in double figures three times. Pinar del Río’s two wins came in the only two games either side kept under control.
Matanzas 4, Las Tunas 2
| Game | Date | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 7 Mar | Las Tunas 4–2 |
| 2 | 8 Mar | Las Tunas 10–6 |
| 3 | 10 Mar | Matanzas 1–0 |
| 4 | 11 Mar | Matanzas 12–7 |
| 5 | 12 Mar | Matanzas 4–3 |
| 6 | 14 Mar | Matanzas 6–3 |
This was the better series and the bigger comeback. Las Tunas took the first two and looked like the team of the postseason. Matanzas then won four in a row, starting with a 1–0 shutout in game three — the only run of the night, and the hinge of the whole round. Game five was a one-run win, and by game six the defending champions were back in the final.
The final: Granma 4, Matanzas 2
The championship series opened on 28 March and ran to 4 April. Five of its six games were decided by one or two runs. The sixth was a rout.
| Game | Date | Result | Series |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 28 Mar | Granma 3–2 | Granma 1–0 |
| 2 | 29 Mar | Granma 6–5 | Granma 2–0 |
| 3 | 31 Mar | Matanzas 3–1 | Granma 2–1 |
| 4 | 1 Apr | Granma 15–5 | Granma 3–1 |
| 5 | 2 Apr | Matanzas 4–3 | Granma 3–2 |
| 6 | 4 Apr | Granma 6–5 | Granma 4–2 |
Granma won the first two by a single run each, lost game three when the offence went quiet, and then produced the one blowout of the series — fifteen runs in game four. Matanzas answered by taking game five 4–3 to force a sixth. On 4 April, Granma won by one run again, 6–5, and the series was over.
Look at the margins together and the shape of the final is clear: Granma won three one-run games and one blowout, Matanzas won a 3–1 and a 4–3. Take away game four and the two teams scored 18 runs apiece across the other five.
Who the champions were
Granma finished the round robin 48–27, a .640 winning percentage, scoring 484 runs and allowing 336. They were carried by a deep lineup rather than one star: Guillermo Avilés hit .371 with 13 home runs and 74 RBIs, Raico Santos hit .350 and scored 69 runs, Osvaldo Abreu hit .348 with 92 hits, and Carlos Benítez hit .347. On the mound, César García won 11 games with a 3.57 ERA, Joel Mojena won nine, and Kelbis Rodríguez saved ten.
It was Granma’s second Serie Nacional title. The first had come only four years earlier, in January 2017, when the Alazanes beat Ciego de Ávila to win the 56th series — the province’s first championship in a tournament that had been running since 1961.
The rematch, fourteen months later
The 61st Serie Nacional began on 23 January 2022 and was the first in the tournament’s history played entirely inside one calendar year. It ended with the same two teams in the final — and the same winner. This time it took all seven games: Granma won 4–3, closing it out on 29 June 2022 with a 4–0 shutout. Back-to-back titles, and two in the space of fourteen months.
Our coverage as it happened
Cuba Dugout followed the 60th series live. Those posts were written before the results were known and are kept here as a record of the postseason as it unfolded.
Quarterfinals
- Santiago de Cuba v Las Tunas, game 3 — as we covered it
- Santiago de Cuba v Las Tunas, game 4 — as we covered it
Semifinals
- Granma v Pinar del Río, game 3 — as we covered it
- Granma v Pinar del Río, game 4 — as we covered it
- Granma v Pinar del Río, game 5 — as we covered it
- Granma v Pinar del Río, game 6 — as we covered it
- Matanzas v Las Tunas, game 1 — as we covered it
- Matanzas v Las Tunas, game 2 — as we covered it
- Matanzas v Las Tunas, game 3 — as we covered it
- Matanzas v Las Tunas, game 4 — as we covered it
- Matanzas v Las Tunas, game 5 — as we covered it
- Matanzas v Las Tunas, game 6 — as we covered it
Final
- Granma v Matanzas, game 1 — as we covered it
- Granma v Matanzas, game 2 — as we covered it
- Granma v Matanzas, game 3 — as we covered it
- Granma v Matanzas, game 4 — as we covered it
- Granma v Matanzas, game 5 — as we covered it
- Granma v Matanzas, game 6 — the clincher — as we covered it
- The final in full — as we covered it
The following season is covered in our 61st Serie Nacional archive.
A note on sources
Every score above is taken from the game-by-game record at beisbolencuba.com and cross-checked against the season summaries maintained on Wikipedia and the World Baseball Softball Confederation’s report of the final. Where our own coverage from 2021 was written live, before the outcome was known, it has been kept as published and now points here for the result. We do not backdate.
Spotted an error in this article? Let us know and we'll correct it.
