If you all followed my afternoon gambling picks today, then you must be happy to feel a fair amount richer right now than you were this morning.  If Houston can pull off a win in LA (they’re currently tied 1-1 in the 9th), then you’d be a lot richer than you were this morning.  Here’s my picks to help you extend that dopamine rush throughout the rest of the night.

COPA AMERICA: Chile (-140) vs Uruguay (+450), tie (+265)

If you like soccer at all and you haven’t been watching Copa America, well, you should start watching.  It’s pretty sick.  Awesome South American’s like Messi, Neymar, and James Rodriguez putting it all out on the line for country pride.  You could possibly say that it’s a more entertaining soccer tournament than the Women’s World Cup, but more on that later tonight…

The knockout rounds start tonight, and an interesting quirk this tournament has is that the quarterfinals and semifinals will go straight to PKs if both teams are tied after 90 minutes.  That’s right.  No overtime.  Straight to nail biting penalty kicks.  For degenerate gamblers like us, this could actually present real good value to take underdogs in two way moneylines (Uruguay is +220 for that), but we’re not doing that tonight.

Gotta go with Chile all the way here.  Uruguay is a great team, but they’ve been looking lost without Suarez on attack (he is still suspended from international play because of the biting incident last summer).  Chile, on the other hand, was the only team that consistently dominated during the group stage.  Alexis Sanchez tore up the EPL with Arsenal this year and he hasn’t slowed down one bit with Chile, helping them to win their group with a combined score of 10-3 over three games.  And during that whole time, Chile had been partying like rock stars, breaking laws, and still having all their home fans yelling at the courts to leave the team alone.  How cool is that?  Oh yeah, Chile is the host nation too.  Lay the wood with this team.

BTW – for soccer picks, I like my unit size to be 4x the amount as baseball because of the volume discrepancy in number of games.

On to baseball…

Reds (+163) at Pirates (-178)

Gerrit Cole at home.  And Cincinnati is a terrible road team.  Done.

Braves (+145) at Nationals (-160)

Take Shelby Miller with plus money against a division rival.

Cardinals (-122) at Marlins (+112)

Cheap price for the Cards.  Jaime Garcia’s legit.  Take them

Orioles (+135) at Red Sox (-150)

For some reason Clay Buckholz is priced like a real #1 pitcher.  But he shouldn’t be.  He sucks.  And so do the Red Sox.  Until Vegas starts adjusting their prices, fade Boston every day.

Dodgers (-114) at Cubs (+104)

Take the Dodgers to salvage a sweep after two very close losses.

Athletics (+115) at Rangers (-125)

Texas is a solid home team against a very mediocre opponent tonight.

Diamondbacks (+115) at Rockies (-125)

Take the D-Backs with plus money in this toss up, as well as over 10.5 runs (-130) at Coors Field with two poor pitchers on the mound tonight.

Royals (-102) at Mariners (-108)

Danny Duffy is coming off the DL for Kansas City tonight and apparently he’s been fire in his rehab starts after making some mechanical adjustments.  Seattle’s also trotting out Elias, giving KC a lefty arm they can crush.

Padres (+113) at Giants (-123)

Nori Aoki, the Giants’ leading hitter, just got diagnosed with a fibula fracture and is out for awhile.  With Hunter Pence also on the DL, San Francisco could have some issues on offense.  Ian Kennedy’s been real good for the Padres lately, and the Giants are rolling out their worst starter in Vogelsong.