Late last year, WEEI afternoon co-host Lou Merloni announced he was leaving Merloni, Fauria, and Mego as part of a larger shakeup of the Boston sports radio station to work as a game analyst for the Boston Red Sox on both WEEI and NESN.

In an interview with The Athletic, Merloni discussed his exit from the program and admitted after a decade and a half, sports radio had become increasingly difficult. But being a game analyst had always been of interest to him.

“It’s what I’ve always wanted to do,” Merloni said. “I’ve done games before and that was my happy place. I liked doing sports talk, but after a while, it was 15 years, it started grinding on you more than I wanted it to.”

Merloni — who spent nine seasons in the big leagues with the Red Sox, Padres, Indians, and Angels — added that the negativity of sports radio grew to be an issue for him.

“You wake up every day and search for that negative topic and it wears on you and turns you extremely negative,” he said. “It’s not manufactured, it’s just, that’s your job. If you just talk about nothing but how great the Bruins are, nobody would ever call in. So it’s ‘Why isn’t (David) Pastrnak signed yet?’

“So those are things that get people interacting with sports radio and those are the discussions you have. But you also want to keep it somewhat positive and balanced, it’s just different. There’s always that search for that sort of angle. And that grinds on you, it really does. It turns you into something you’re not, maybe.”

The soon-to-be 52-year-old said joining the NESN booth came at a great time for him.

“I’ve always wanted to be in the TV booth, I just didn’t know when the right time was, so sometimes things work out for a reason,”

MLB’s Opening Day is upon us, and with new rules implemented to improve the pace of play, many have questioned how the rules will affect broadcasters. New York Yankees television voice Michael Kay said radio crews are the ones who will be hurt by the new statutes.

During a conference call discussing ESPN’s KayRod Cast, Kay was asked how the new rules would alter not only the usual television broadcast, but also his alternate broadcast with former 14-time All-Star Alex Rodriguez.

“I don’t think it’s going to impact television broadcasts that much. Maybe you won’t be able to see eight replays on a simple ground ball to short because there’s not much time between batters, but I think it’s going to have a big impact on radio broadcasts where the analyst simply is not going to have time to talk. They’re just not,” Kay said.

“There’s no pictures that you can talk over like in baseball. The analysts can talk to a couple of pitches, but in radio that’s just not going to happen. It can’t happen. I think that’s going to be a really different vibe, baseball on the radio this year.”

“I do like the changes, and I think the pace is going to be both better to watch and to announce,” Rodriguez added.

Kay mentioned that while the news rules were an adjustment, he did enjoy the overall speed of the game.

“The pace is so much better. I don’t think there should be a complaint about pitch clock or anything like that. That’s how the game should be played.”

The 2023 Los Angeles Angels begin their new season Thursday in Oakland, and almost 400 miles south of RingCentral Coliseum at Angel Stadium of Anaheim. The team’s radio broadcasters will be virtually alone in the broadcast booth calling the game remotely.

Terry Smith and Mark Langston, the Angels’ radio broadcast team, will not travel for road games this season. It marks the fourth year since the COVID-shortened season in 2020 that the team has decided to keep the radio crew grounded.

The Angels and the Toronto Blue Jays are the only two teams that don’t send their main English speaking radio broadcasters to road games. Both in Anaheim and Toronto, the moves are viewed as a cost-cutting measure.

“We just found that the economics – 40,000-50,000 miles is not going to change that experience,” Angels owner Arte Moreno said earlier this month in a press conference earlier this week.

As for the Angels’ Spanish speaking broadcasts, half of the 2023 season will air on KWKW. Rolando Gonzalez will be the play-by-play voice.

Gonzalez replaces longtime Spanish broadcaster Jose Tolentino, who told The Athletic that he was forced out of the role by the team.