Every final score posted during the 1888 Major League Baseball season, tabulated by winning-team runs and losing-team runs.
Baseball games end with a final score, like 8–6. The number across the top is how many runs the winning team scored; the number down the side is how many runs the losing team scored. Where a column and row meet, that square shows how many 1888 games ended with that score — click it to see them.
The 1888 season produced 1,092 games between 16 clubs, running from April 18, 1888 to October 17, 1888. Those games ended in 144 different final scores, 44 of which occurred exactly once all season. The most common result was 3–2, posted 54 times — 4.9% of the season's games. The season also produced 22 tie games, which sit on the board's diagonal.
Teams combined for 9.73 runs per game in 1888, 0.28 runs above the all-time average of 9.45. That is the 2nd-lowest scoring rate among the 30 seasons before 1901. Shutouts accounted for 152 games (13.9% of the total), and 270 of the 1,070 decided games were settled by a single run (25.2%).
The highest-scoring game of the season came on June 6, 1888, when the CL3 beat the LS2 23–19 — 42 combined runs. The widest margin was 21 runs: the PH4 over the CL3 28–7 on April 23, 1888.
Three final scores appeared for the first time in major league history during 1888: 19–15, 23–19, 26–14. Each one is a scorigami — a combination of winning and losing runs that no game had produced before.
This season sits in the early National League era, before the pitching distance was moved back to its modern 60 feet 6 inches. Scoring ran far higher than it would after 1900.