The Toronto Blue Jays have officially named Shaun Marcum as their Opening Day starter for the 2010 season today.

Marcum receives the Opening Day nod on Monday April 5th 2010, as the Jays begin the season by visiting the Texas Rangers in Arlington.

Marcum & Ricky Romero were favorites to win the spot out of Spring Training, both putting together excellent spring numbers so far.

Marcum currently sits with a spring record of 1-0 with an earned run average of 0.00 across five innings pitched, allowing just one hit thus far.

Romero has seen more work, pitching 14 innings with a record of 3-0 with an earned run average of 1.93.

Marcum is recovering from a year long hiatus due to Tommy John surgery; hence the low innings pitched mark.

However, Jays manager Cito Gaston seems more comfortable turning to Marcum who has the definitive experience edge over Romero, who is only pitching in his second big league season.

Marcum has career numbers of 24-17 with an earned run average of 3.95 across 89 games pitched, 64 of which were starts, spanning 396.2 innings pitched.

Marcum possesses solid command of the strike zone and all of his pitches feature a large amount of movement in the hitting zone.

Marcum’s cut fastball and changeup are his go to pitches, which he uses wisely.

With Marcum tabbed as the number one starter Romero will fill in the two spot, with Brandon Morrow third in the rotation.

Marc Rzepczynski & Brian Tallet look to be the fourth and fifth starters respectively, but that has not been officially announced as of yet.

For those of you who missed the Jays action over the weekend, Toronto defeated the Atlanta Braves in an exciting 7-6 finish in extra innings on Saturday and had their contest with the Boston Red Sox rained out on Sunday.

The Jays host the Detroit Tigers today in Dunedin at 1:05pm EST.

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