VSiN By The Books | August 25, 2026 | Hour 3

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This is VSiN By The Books, on VSiN, the eSports betting network.

**Dave Ross** (0:12)
Top of the hour, it is VSiN By The Books. I'm Dave Ross right here at the Midgaming Hall in Franklin, Kentucky. Our closer Jensen Lewis back home in Cleveland, Ohio. Gonna have Ryan Kramer join the program a little bit later on in this hour from the Sports Gambling Podcast. Always fun to chop it up with Ryan talking some college football a little bit later on. This week's Zero is gonna be beginning here on Saturday. I'm gonna get to our best bets here as we do each and every day. And of course, more football talk with the Daily Gridiron. But right now, we like it in the betting market, certainly in the sports world in general. It's time to get to this week's edition of our Chaos Candidates.
Bass is out. It is heavy on a Tuesday. Jensen Lewis, your first Chaos Candidate is who?

**Jensen Lewis** (1:05)
Yeah, the New York Yankees Injury List. And yeah, guys coming, guys going, waiting for returns of Aaron Judge. Doesn't sound like we're gonna get Giancarlo Stanton back. I told you those pesky calf injuries. It is stealing money with what Giancarlo Stanton's been doing, trying to rehab back from that. So still have Max Fried to come back. It does sound like he's gonna be there just for the minimum 15 days. Ryan Weathers though, the strain forearm, that does dampen the spirits there, even with a rotation that should be well stocked. Now anxious to see what Aaron Boone does in the post season, but you can imagine, if it's a healthy Max Fried, then it's one of Garrett Kohler Kam Schlitler for game one and game two.
Probably Max Fried in a winner take all game three in the wild card series. And then you have Carlos Rodin. Should you need to start game one of a division series? That's pretty damn good. But at the same time, if you don't have Aaron Judge, at least the way Aaron Judge is when he's right, then does it even matter? You did get Cody Bellinger back over the weekend. We'll see what he can do moving forward. And I think it's plenty of time for him to kind of get back to that form that he was before the injury.
But if they're right and if they're healthy, Dave, the Yankees are the team to beat. I'm sorry to say even an 80% Aaron Judge and you get all the pitching reinforcements back outside of Ryan Weathers.
I think the Yankees are that team. So that's the real Chaos candidate. And the injury issues be rectified very much the way that the Dodgers were able to get healthy at the right time. Last year in September, the Yankees can do that. I think they find their way back to the top of the heap in the junior circuit.

**Dave Ross** (2:55)
Those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Now we've seen instances of remarkable comebacks in decades, in years past, just go back to last year where your guardians just, you know, this thing is over until it's not over with the Tigers down the stretch and these wild swings that we have seen. You tell me and have told me all year that this division in particular is normally where you get the ultimate chaos. Now you can go back to 1978 and you can look at the Yankees in Bucky Dent. Dent is a four-letter word. They use it differently in Boston because the Yankees that year were 14 games back of the Red Sox in mid-July and came all the way back and won a one-game playoff in 78 in the rest of history. The Kansas City Royals right now are only, only eight games back in the wild card. Yet there's 16 games under 500 They are currently the hottest team in Major League Baseball with an eight-game win streak.
Jensen, if this team somehow was able to think about getting close to 500 as we just laid out earlier in this program, shameless plug where if you catch a podcast, please like and subscribe to VSiN By The Books. Listen on your time.
That you can make the case that if you're sniffing 500, you're sniffing a wild card. Now, I don't know that they can keep up this pace a la the Boston Red Sox. Can they go on and maybe win 31 out of 36? It would take something of that ilk to actually make this a reality. But I was surprised when they didn't just wave the flag at the trade deadline, Kansas City Royals, at that time, one of the worst three teams in not only in the American League, but all of baseball and say, you know what, let's trade away all of our parts. They didn't do that. Some parts, minor parts. But they kept the old guys in the rotation, right? The Lugos and the Lakers. And all of a sudden, they're playing respectable baseball down the stretch. Maybe it's not just to play spoiler, which is normally what you get with young teams bringing up prospects. When you're still trotting out the old veterans, Jensen, I wonder in the back of their mind that they go, we saw what happened in this division, not 20 years ago, not 10 years ago, but last year, why not us?