Cuban Moinelo reaches First Win in Japanese Professional Baseball

GRANMA, Cuba, Jul 3 (acn) Cuban pitcher Livan Moinelo, who plays for the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, got his first win in the Japanese Professional Baseball League (NPB) when beating 5-4 the Rakuten Golden Eagles.

Moinelo only pitched a third of an inning, a strikeout, when his team lost 1-4 in the eighth and then the Hawks scored four runs, thus taking the lead 5-4.
Cuban lefty reliever was then replaced by star closer Dennis Sarfate, who earned his 24th save of the season.
This was Moinelo´s third outing in the NPB; in the previous one, last Saturday; he allowed three unearned runs with a strikeout and a walk in a third of inning.
His NPB debut was on June 27th against the Nippon Ham Fighters, where he pitched a scoreless inning, with a strikeout and a walk, thus contributing to the 6-0 win of his squad.
Cuban slugger Alfredo Despaigne, one of the Hawks' offensive stars, hit 0 for 3 with a walk in this match.
Despite his poor offensive performance recently, Despaigne continues to lead the Pacific League in homers with 20, tied with his teammate Yuki Yanagita, and ranks second in RBIs with 59, only surpassed by Yanagita (67).
OF Roel Santos, the other Cuban player enrolled in the NPB, hit 0 for 4 and scored a run in the 3-8 defeat of his team, the Chiba Lotte Marines, to the Nippon Ham Fighters.
Now the Hawks rank second in the Pacific League with 49 wins and 27 losses, and the Marines appear last with only 23 wins.