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 16th.

Yesterday in the 606, C.J. Wilson led the Rangers to a series win in Arlington holding the Red Sox to 1 earned run over 7.1 innings helping them extend their division lead in the AL West.

Win: C.J. Wilson (7.2 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 1 BB, 8 K, 0.65 WHIP)

The 606 Season-to-Date Record (W-L-ND): 95-83-57, 3.77 ERA (614 ER in 1466.1 IP)

Billingsley and Hanson are both looking to their teams for help. (AP)

Today in the 606, two righties, with a lack of run support as of late, square off as one team tries to solidify their playoff spot as the other holds the candle for their play off hopes steady as it barely stays lit.

RHP Chad Billingsley - LAD (9-7, 3.78 ERA) vs. RHP Tommy Hanson - ATL (8-8, 3.51 ERA)
Stop me if you have already heard this one, but Chad Billingsley has been pretty good in his past handful of outings, but unfortunately he has no wins to show for it.  A lot has been made lately as the Dodgers made moves at the deadline but nothing really to put them over the top.  Two weeks later their playoff hopes are all but gone.  Billingsley has inversely performed during this stretch.  He only has two wins to show for it, but in the past 5 starts he have only given up 5 earned runs.  One of those wins came on a complete game shut-out, which pretty much guaranteed him the win.  Even though the sample size is small Billingsley has pretty much owned the Braves.  Brian McCann is the only Brave to take him deep, but that is his only hit in 11 at-bats with 5 strike outs.  The only other two Braves that have made good contact off Chad are Martin Prado and Nate McLouth - both of which won't be making an appearance today in the line-up.

After having a couple blow up starts in May and in June, Hanson escaped July without giving up more than 3 earned runs in any one start.  So far in August he has logged 21.1 innings pitched and given up only 2 earned runs - 1 run, in each of his first two August starts.  Unfortunately for Hanson and the Braves the only win he has collected in those three starts came when he threw 7 scoreless his last time out against Houston in the Juice Box.  The Braves are dealing with some injury problems themselves, losing Chipper Jones last week and Martin Prado just scheduled to start his rehab assignment this week for coming off the DL.  Lucky for them Troy Glaus has recently seen some of that April-May magic in his bat, which would be a huge help to their line-up.  As for Hanson's history against the Dodgers, it is pretty non-existent.  There are four players with 6 at-bats against Hanson with the rest seeing less.  Like his mound adversary today, Hanson has only given up 1 home run to the current Dodgers and that was against Andre Ethier.

Final Prediction:  Tommy Hanson