Liván Moinelo beat the Orix Buffaloes on 15 September for his fifth win of the season. It was his sixth appearance of the year. He did not throw a competitive pitch until 11 August.
That is the whole story of Moinelo’s 2026 in two sentences, and almost none of it has been told in English. The left-hander who won the Pacific League’s Most Valuable Player award in 2025 — the first Cuban ever to win it — lost the first four months of this season to trouble in his left shoulder. Since he came back he has been better than he was when he won the MVP.
The fifth win
Against Orix on 15 September, Moinelo went six innings, gave up three hits and one earned run, struck out four and threw 87 pitches. The win moved him to 5–1.
A week earlier, on 8 September, he had thrown 6.1 innings and given up one run for his fourth win. To see why any of this is remarkable you have to start with the four months he missed.
Four months of nothing
Moinelo did not appear in a first-team game between the end of the 2025 season and 11 August 2026. The problem was his left shoulder. Nishinippon Sports reported through the middle of the season that he remained on a no-throw programme with discomfort around the shoulder and that his plan for game action had been torn up, with a first-team return not expected before the All-Star break.
That return slipped past the break. On 4 August the Nishinippon Shimbun reported he was in line to pitch in the Lotte series beginning on the 11th at Mizuho PayPay Dome, his first appearance of the year. “My body is at 100 per cent,” he said.
He got it. SoftBank beat Lotte 16–2 on 11 August, the lineup hitting four home runs behind him, and Moinelo had his first win of the year in his first start. He won the next two as well.
The shutout at ZOZO Marine
On 25 August at ZOZO Marine Stadium, in his third game back and 3–0 on the year, Moinelo threw a complete-game shutout against the Chiba Lotte Marines: nine innings, three hits, no runs, nine strikeouts, 115 pitches. SoftBank won 9–0. It was his first shutout of the season, and he came off the mound saying he was tired.
Better than his MVP season
The six-start line is the point. Moinelo has pitched 41.1 innings in 2026 and allowed four earned runs.
| Season | Role | G | W–L | IP | ERA | K |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | First year as a starter | 25 | 11–5 | 163.0 | 1.88 — led league | 155 |
| 2025 | Starter — Pacific League MVP | 24 | 12–3 | 167.0 | 1.46 — led league | 172 |
| 2026 | Returned 11 August | 6 | 5–1 | 41.1 | 0.87 | 32 |
Season figures from NPB official statistics, as of 16 September 2026. His WHIP is 0.68.
Ten seasons in Fukuoka
Moinelo has pitched for the SoftBank Hawks since 2017. He spent seven years as one of the best relievers in Japan — 40 saves and 135 holds, a Best Reliever award in 2020 — then moved into the rotation in 2024 and won the earned run average title in each of his first two seasons as a starter. Through 14 September, NPB credits him with 360 career games, a 46–18 record, 665.2 innings, 777 strikeouts and a 1.74 ERA.
He is 30 years old.
The timing matters for his club. SoftBank beat Orix 4–0 on 16 September to cut the magic number for a third consecutive Pacific League pennant to two, and Moinelo has given up four earned runs across the six starts he has made since returning.
The other Cuban in Japan
Moinelo is one half of the best Cuban pitching story outside the major leagues. The other is Raidel Martínez, who saved his 250th game in Japan on 10 September, the first Cuban-born pitcher to reach the mark. We set the two of them side by side in our account of the Cubans in Japan.
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