If you were to think about the list of worst starts in Yankees history, your mind would probably go to the ones that you remember being the costliest in terms of importance. A pitcher going out and having a dud in a playoff game or another important matchup is more memorable than doing so in a mid-June game against a non-divisional opponent.

However in terms of just the worst stat line possible, it’s hard to top the one from 25 years ago today, which came in a mid-June game against a non-divisional opponent, but whew was it bad.

June 18: Yankees 4, White Sox 17 (box score)

Record: 34-29 (0.5 GB in AL East)

Facing the White Sox on a Sunday afternoon in the Bronx (Bat Day, in fact), Yankees starter Orlando Hernández got things started off by getting Ray Durham to ground out. However, he then lost a nine-pitch battle with José Valentín, putting him on with a walk. Things began to come unglued after that.

Following a Valentín steal of second, Frank Thomas scored him with a double. The Big Hurt certainly did that plenty over the year, so no biggie there, as long as you could get back on track, and, on this day, El Duque couldn’t. Magglio Ordóñez then walked, which was followed by a Paul Konerko RBI single. Chris Singleton and Carlos Lee tacked on by adding a double and a single respectively, scoring three more runs.

Hernández finally managed to get the second out of the inning by striking out Greg Norton, however that turned out to be the last one he got on the day. Following Mark Johnson’s single, Ray Durham came back up as Chicago batted around. Durham singled to load the bases, and Valentín then put the cherry on top of everything he started. He took El Duque deep for a grand slam, giving the White Sox a 9-0 lead.

Not shockingly, that ended up being the final batter Hernández faced for the day. In just 0.2 innings, he allowed nine runs on six hits and three walks. His Game Score of 2 is tied for the 11th worst in Yankees history, and all 10 pitchers ahead of him — one of which is actually El Duque himself, with a -3 Game Score from a 1998 game — still managed to get through at least one inning.

The Yankees ended the top of the first inning with a Win Expectancy of just four percent. That’s firmly in the “stranger things have happened, but it’s extremely unlikely” category. Needless to say, no crazy comeback was on the cards.

After White Sox starter Jim Parque worked around a bases loaded jam in the first, the Chicago offense immediately added three more runs off reliever Allan Watson in the second inning. Watson and Todd Erdos combined to give up four more in the fifth. At that point, the Yankees trailed 16-0, and their win expectancy was very much zero percent.

The Yankees’ offense did get on the board at least in the sixth inning. Jorge Posada drove home Chris Turner on a double, and Scott Brosius hit a three-run homer a couple batters later, but even that wasn’t enough to get the win expectancy above zero percent.

That ended up being the extent of any rally, as the White Sox later added one more run for the road, and won a laugher 17-4. For the series, Chicago had outscored them 42-17. After the game X-rays revealed that Hernández had a sprained elbow, and while the Yankees were hopeful that he could just skip a start and not land on the injured list, he wouldn’t appear again until July 1st.

Thankfully in baseball, there’s almost always a new game in the next day or two to wash the taste out of your mouth, because this one wasn’t fun.

Read the full 2000 Yankees Diary series here.