As of 29 October 2026. The Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks finished a four-game sweep of the Yokohama DeNA BayStars on Wednesday night, 28 October, and Liván Moinelo has a sixth Japan Series title. Cuba’s state sports daily JIT went further the same night: six, it said, is the most won by any foreign player in Japanese professional baseball, one more than the Hawks’ former closer Dennis Sarfate.
The first half of that is right. The second half depends on how you count, and on the count we can verify it is a share of the record, not the record outright. Below: how the Series went, what Moinelo did in it, and the check.
The Series: four straight
SoftBank won 3–1 and 4–3 in ten innings at Yokohama Stadium, then 2–1 in ten and 4–2 at Mizuho PayPay Dome Fukuoka (Baseball Channel game pages; NHK). Game 3 ended on a walk-off home run by Tomoya Masaki in the tenth, and Masaki was named the Series MVP (Baseball Channel; NHK). In Game 4 DeNA led 2–0 after Keita Sano’s first-inning home run; Yudai Yamamoto’s two-run triple tied it in the fourth and Yuki Yanagita’s single put the Hawks ahead (Baseball Channel). It is SoftBank’s second straight title and the franchise’s thirteenth, counting the Nankai and Daiei years (NHK; Nikkei).
Moinelo’s part was one start. In Game 2 on 25 October he threw seven scoreless innings for the Hawks — five hits, no walks, eight strikeouts — and left with a 2–0 lead that the bullpen gave up in the eighth; SoftBank won in the tenth and he took no decision (Sports Hochi; Nishi Sports; Baseball Channel). Haru Matsumoto started Game 3 and Yugo Maeda Game 4 (Baseball Channel). It capped a season in which he did not pitch until 11 August and still finished 6–1 with a 0.76 ERA in seven regular-season games for the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, Pacific League, 2026 (NPB register; our report on his fifth win).
Six titles, counted
Moinelo, a left-hander from Pinar del Río, joined the Hawks in 2017 and has been with them ever since. SoftBank have won the Japan Series six times in that span: 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020, then 2025 and 2026 (JIT; Wikipedia’s Japan Series MVP list; Baseball Channel and NHK for 2025–26). Between 2021 and 2024 the title went to Yakult, Orix, Hanshin and DeNA.
JIT’s comparison is with Sarfate, the American closer who was with the Hawks from 2014 to 2021. It credits him with five titles — 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2019 — of which Moinelo shares the last three.
The name JIT left out: Kuo Tai-yuan
Kuo Tai-yuan, a Taiwanese right-hander, pitched for the Seibu Lions for thirteen seasons, 1985 to 1997 (Pacific League official site; his Japanese biography). Pacific League records credit him with 117 wins, the most by a foreign pitcher in Japan since the war (pacificleague.com). Both pacificleague.com and Number Web class him as a foreign player.
Seibu won the Japan Series six times in Kuo’s years there: 1986, 1987 and 1988, then 1990, 1991 and 1992 (Wikipedia’s club history and its Japan Series MVP list; Baseball Channel gives Seibu thirteen titles in all, which matches). By the game-by-game account in his Japanese-language biography he pitched in all six of those Series — including a complete-game win over the Giants in 1987 and a save in the deciding Game 7 of 1986.
So on the simplest count — championships won while on the club — Kuo has six, the same as Moinelo. We have not audited every foreign player’s roster since the first Japan Series, so we do not claim Kuo is the only other one. What the evidence supports is that six ties a mark that has stood since 1992; it does not break one.
Why Sarfate’s five is the wrong benchmark
Sarfate’s count shows how much depends on the rules of counting. He had hip surgery in 2018 and never pitched for the Hawks’ first team again; he retired, still a Hawk, on 30 November 2021 (Daily Sports; Wikipedia). Two of the five titles JIT gives him, 2018 and 2019, came in seasons cut short or lost to that injury. Yet JIT leaves out 2020, when he was also still on the Hawks’ books and they won again. Count club seasons and Sarfate has six too; count Series he actually pitched in and he has three (2014, 2015 and 2017, when he was the Series MVP).
Moinelo’s six do not depend on the counting rule. He was a working member of the Hawks’ staff in every one of those seasons, and he started in the last two Series — Game 3 against Hanshin in 2025 (NPB; Daily Sports) and Game 2 against DeNA this year.
The count side by side
| Player | Club and years | Japan Series titles with the club | Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liván Moinelo (Cuba) | Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, 2017– | 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2025, 2026 | 6 |
| Kuo Tai-yuan (Taiwan) | Seibu Lions, 1985–1997 | 1986, 1987, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1992 | 6 |
| Dennis Sarfate (United States) | Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, 2014–2021 | 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019 as JIT counts them; the Hawks also won in 2020 while he was on the club | 5 (JIT) |
A Cuban thread through both dynasties
The Seibu teams Kuo pitched for had a Cuban-born slugger of their own. Orestes Destrade, born in Santiago de Cuba (MLB Stats API), played for Seibu from 1989 to 1992 and again in 1995 (pacificleague.com), which puts him on the 1990, 1991 and 1992 champions alongside Kuo. Thirty years later the Hawks’ run had a Cuban core: Yurisbel Gracial was MVP of the 2019 Japan Series (Wikipedia’s MVP list; OnCuba), with Moinelo in the bullpen behind him.
Of all of them, Moinelo is the one still adding to the total. He was the Pacific League’s MVP in 2025, and the Hawks’ title this year was their second in a row.
What it means for Pinar del Río
The Hawks’ season is over, so Moinelo’s year in Japan ended on 28 October. Pinar del Río listed him on its 32-man roster for the 65th Serie Nacional in September (our report), and the Vegueros lead the Western zone. No Cuban or Japanese source we have read says whether he will pitch in Cuba this autumn. If he appears in a Serie Nacional box score, we will report it with the date and the source. For the wider picture of Cubans in Japan this season, see our August overview.
Sources
JIT, “Moinelo: récord de títulos entre extranjeros en beisbol de Japón” (28 October 2026); Baseball Channel, Japan Series 2026 game pages for Games 2, 3 and 4 (read 29 October); NHK and Nikkei, 28 October (SoftBank’s thirteenth title, Masaki MVP); NPB, 2025 Japan Series daily report of 27 October 2025 (Game 3 probable starters) and Daily Sports, 28 October 2025 (Game 3); pacificleague.com, December 2018 (Seibu’s foreign players: Kuo and Destrade); Number Web (Kuo); Daily Sports, 30 November 2021 (Sarfate’s retirement); Wikipedia (Saitama Seibu Lions; Japan Series MVP Award; Liván Moinelo; Dennis Sarfate; Kuo Tai-yuan, Japanese edition); OnCuba (Gracial, 2019); MLB Stats API (Destrade). Translations from Spanish and Japanese by Cuba Dugout.
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