Every final score posted during the 1981 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 1981 games ended with that score — click it to see them.
The 1981 season produced 1,426 games between 26 clubs, running from April 8, 1981 to October 28, 1981. Those games ended in 101 different final scores, 29 of which occurred exactly once all season. The most common result was 3–2, posted 92 times — 6.5% of the season's games. The season also produced five tie games, which sit on the board's diagonal.
Teams combined for 7.95 runs per game in 1981, 0.84 runs below the 1901-onward average of 8.79. Shutouts accounted for 228 games (16.0% of the total), and 424 of the 1,421 decided games were settled by a single run (29.8%).
The highest-scoring game of the season came on August 30, 1981, when the Cleveland Guardians beat the Seattle Mariners 17–11 — 28 combined runs. The widest margin was 15 runs: the Oakland Athletics over the Seattle Mariners 16–1 on April 17, 1981.
No final score appeared for the first time in major league history during 1981. Every score posted this season had already happened at least once in an earlier year.
A midseason players' strike wiped out roughly a third of the schedule and the season was split into two halves for playoff purposes.