Liván Moinelo made his debut in the Liga Élite with Artemisa tossing 2 ⅓ innings of no-hit, no-run ball where he fanned four of the eight hitters he faced in Artemisa’s 6-4 win over Industriales to take a 2-0 lead of the Leones in their semifinal playoff series. The left-hander was hitting 95 MPH on the radar gun with the fastball.
The hurler made first appearance since having surgery on his pitching elbow in July for osteochondritis dissecans in the elbow of his throwing arm. According to the information provided by Dr. Francisco Montesinos, medical manager of the Cuban baseball commission and federation, the intervention was successful.
Two free bodies were extracted, made up of fragments of bone and cartilage, and the player is doing very well in these first hours of recovery, explained the doctor after the surgery. The next thing will be to wait for the stitches to heal and he is able to travel to complete part of the rehabilitation in Cuba, added the specialist about the road that lied ahead for Moinelo.
Liván Moinelo made his debut in the Liga Élite with Artemisa tossing 2 ⅓ innings of no-hit, no-run ball where he fanned 4 of the 8 hitters he faced in Artemisa's 6-4 win over Industriales to take a 2-0 lead of the Leones in their semifinal playoff series. #CubanBaseballDigest pic.twitter.com/UnHbMGa3O7
— Cuban Baseball Digest (@CBaseballDigest) January 9, 2024
The decision to operate was made upon discovering the free bodies in the area, but not because he felt pain that prevented him from working effectively. Moinelo was not be available for the Cuban team during the 2023 Pan American Games in Santiago de Chile this November due to the surgery and the needed recovery time.
The Cuban is SoftBank’s setup man and the precursor to closer Roberto Osuna. Moinelo is only the 4th foreign reliever with more than 150 holds in Nippon League history. The diminutive hurler is arguably the best lefty reliever in the Pacific League. On the season the southpaw had 3 wins, 13 holds and five saves all as team’s setup man before being shutdown by the team. In 27 ⅔ innings pitched he has also fanned 37 batters.
Moinelo has been part of the Cuban National Team for close to a decade now and has also seen action in the Pan-American Games, Caribbean World Series and various World Baseball Classics. It was announced that the hurler would convert to a starter and pitching in the Antillean circuit is possibly the first step in this transition.