I doubt Welsh is behind his decline in TV games. He sounded good last night on radio despite Tommy having to tell him to turn on his mic at the top of the broadcast. Welsh commented that on TV somebody else takes care of turning the mic on. Not sure if that was a nod to the Thom hot mic slip-up from last season.
Brantley is contracted to work 25 games on TV. Welsh will work the other 55 road games on TV. (One road game is slated for FOX)
Welsh will work on radio when Brantley is on TV. It seems to me that Welsh will also work radio when Brantley is on vacation. It seems as if Brantley usually has about 25 games off per year, give or take a few.
Welsh will also sit at the TV pre-game show & TV post-game show desk for select home games taking the seat of Sam LeCure, which we saw during the first homestand which I'm guessing will be about 30 of the 81 home games.
This will give Welsh about 25 games off to equal the number Brantley has off.
It seems like he will work just as many games as he did last year, he just won't be in the TV booth for nearly as many.
Here is a summary of where I predict Welsh will be working this season:
TV (all road): 55 games
Radio (half home, half road): 50 games
Pre/post-game desk (all home): 30 games
Vacation: 25 games
I doubt any changes would have been made had Thom not had his hot mic slip-up. Welsh would have worked his usual 125 games on TV and that would have been it. The addition of Larkin added diversity to the broadcast team. I noticed the Reds were taking some heat on social media for having one of the least-diverse broadcast teams in professional sports. The slip-up made management get creative and make some changes.