Baseball Press presents "The 606", a look at the most intriguing pitching matchup of the day, with a final prediction of the winning pitcher. You may be asking yourself "What exactly does The 606 mean? There's no major league baseball for that area code- it's in Eastern Kentucky!" BBP isn't listing players from Eastern Kentucky either. The 606 is short for 60 feet and 6 inches. If you still don't understand, I direct your attention to Official Rule 1.07 from Major League Baseball, referring to the distance from the pitching mound to home plate. Now that we've got that squared away, let's take a look at today's featured pitching matchup for Monday August 9th.

Yesterday in the 606, Trevor Cahill outdueled the Texas Cobra, Colby Lewis , by going 8 innings and allowing no earned runs in Oakland.  Michael Wuertz locked things down in the ninth to secure Cahill his 12th win on the season.

Loss: Colby Lewis (6 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 3 BB, 7 K, 1.00 WHIP)

The 606 Season-to-Date Record (W-L-ND): 93-78-57, 3.80 ERA (602 ER in 1427 IP)

Lester leads the beat up Sox into the Bronx against Hughes. (AP)

In today's 606, two young arms face off against each other to lead their respective teams into the final match-up of a 4 game series in one of the biggest rivalries in baseball.

LHP Jon Lester - BOS (11-7, 3.07 ERA) vs. RHP Phil Hughes - NYY (13-4, 3.96 ERA)
Jon Lester is coming off of his fourth straight loss, which came against the Indians last Wednesday.  Over those four games he has seen his ERA climb from 2.81 to 3.07.  Unfortunately he wasn't seeing all stellar offenses in those games, as mentioned the Indians, as well as the Seattle Mariners.  He faced some cramping his last time out which probably lead to the troubles against the Indians.  He has faced the Yankees twice this year, splitting the decisions while giving up 6 earned runs over 12 innings pitched.  Derek Jeter has always pestered  Lester grabbing 10 hits in 30 at-bats and the newest member of the 600 home run club Alex Rodriguez is slugging a healthy .773 against the south paw.

Phil Hughes takes the hill for the Yankees who have take 2 of the 3 games so far this series.  Hoping to secure another win to avoid the split of the series, Hughes needs to give the Yankees some solid innings because of the shuffle in the rotation due to A.J. Burnett's bum back.  Going deep into the game has been a problem of Hughes lately, only making it past the 6th inning once in July and only going 5.1 in his only August start.  He has clearly eclipsed his previous innings high for a season and it may be wearing on him.  Even though there it is a small sample size, David Ortiz (4-6, 1 home run) and J.D. Drew (5-9, 1 home run) are the only two healthy Red Sox that have done any considerable damage to Hughes.  He has a 2-0 mark against the Red Sox this year allowing 7 runs in 12 innings.

Final Prediction:  Phil Hughes