Phelps takes the hill in Saturday showdown.

Taking a no-hitter into the 6th inning wasn't enough for CC Sabathia and the Yankees to overcome the Orioles Friday night in the series opener. Baltimore tied the game with three runs in the 6th, then took the lead on a solo homerun by Nate McLouth in the 7th. In the end, the Yankees weren't able to overcome an offensive shortage, falling to the O's 4-3.

Tonight's lineup, 7:10 ET @ Camden Yards:

Gardner CF
Nix SS
Cano 2B
Wells DH
Suzuki RF
Almonte LF
Adams 3B
Overbay 1B
Romine C
Phelps P

Pitching Preview:

David Phelps is making his first of the season against the Orioles, looking to end his spectacular June in style. Phelps is 2-1 with a 2.66 ERA in the month of June and lowered his season ERA to 4.01.

This will be his second time facing Baltimore, first as a starter. Back on April 13, Phelps tossed four scoreless innings, allowing only one hit, while walking none and striking out six in a relief outing.

As the number starter in the Yankees rotation, Phelps has hardly done anything to disappoint. Since earning a starting job early in the year, he's easily been one of the Yankees better pitchers and solidified himself in the back-end of the rotation.

Phelps will be opposed by Baltimore lefty, Zach Britton, who's made a pair of starts since recently being called up, but has only tallied up 10 2/3 innings in those two starts, while striking out six and walking six. His last outing was against the Indians on Monday when he gave up three runs over five plus innings.

"[He] just elevated some balls, lost his command," manager Buck Showalter said. "He had pretty good movement, late life. He got out of some potential sticky situations, but I thought he pitched well for five innings. But ... different stuff showed up there in the sixth."

Britton has never had success in his career against the Yankees, entering play with a disastrous ERA of 7.82 over six starts.

Game notes:

Facing a lefty for the second straight day, the Yankees are once again without Travis Hafner in their lineup, but have slotted Lyle Overbay back into the starting nine.

The Yankees offense has not done a great job of treading water lately, going 12-19 over their last 31 games, while averaging only 3.2 runs per game. It's been a while since we've since the April Yankees.

"We've got to figure it out," Girardi said. "For me to spend all my time worrying about that is not going to do me any good. The bottom line is that I think these guys are capable of getting it done, and we've just got to do it."

"On a daily basis, I don't really think a lot about it. I think about how you're going to win that game today," he said. "As we left Spring Training, we said that the strength of our club was going to be our pitching, and we were probably going to have to win a lot of tight games. We're going to have to continue to do that if we're going to have success."

Tonight's game can be seen on FOX, and you can follow @GavinEwbank2013 on Twitter.