If you were frustrated by the Cubs losing 2-1 to the Dodgers on Thursday night, despite having runners at first and second and nobody out in the eighth and the ninth and not scoring any of those four runners, you might just want to embrace that feeling.  Because it’s going to be with you all summer.

The biggest problem with the Cubs is a complete lack of depth, and their only recourse is to keep bringing guys up from AAA Iowa to try to patch holes.  Given that the Cubs’ minor league system is devoid of any real impact talent other than one guy just tearing the Midwest League a new ass, there is no help on the way.

When it comes to the Cubs sale, we defer to our friend Chuck at the brilliantly (re)named chucktochuck.com,  and the news, as we’ve been suspecting for some time now, is bleak.

The once all-but-inevitable sale of the Cubs to the Ricketts family is hanging on by a thread, and that thread is fraying rapidly.

As Phil Rosenthal reported on Thursday, Sam Zell, the erstwhile owner of the Tribune Company, and therefore the Cubs, was quoted on Bloomberg TV as saying, ““We’ve made it very public that the Cubs don’t fit into the long term picture of the Tribune.  So if the Ricketts deal doesn’t get done, I’m sure there will be other ones.”

Short of an announcement that the deal has completely fallen apart, this is the worst possible news for anyone hoping the Cubs could reinforce their roster during the season.

Zell may be a loose cannon, but this was a calculated statement.  As Chuck wrote, he’s basically saying, “Hey, if you wanted to buy the Cubs, you are about to get another chance!”

Without a sale, you can forget about the Cubs trading for Jake Peavy.  They simply won’t be allowed to take on extra salary, especially nothing like Peavy’s that carries a huge price tag over several years.

In recent days, Jim Hendry has been saying things like “we anticipate we can add players” or “we hope we can take on more salary.”  That’s code for, “Unless something changes, we can’t do shit.”

It’s not going to change.

We saw a change in the way Cubs did business this offseason.  Since the Tribune Company put the Cubs on the selling block after the 2006 season there were few limitations to payroll.  They added Alfonso Soriano and extended E-Ramis and Carlos Zambrano and brought in other free agents, and unlike most teams not named the Yankees or Red Sox, they didn’t have to move salary to add players.

This past offseason, they did.  Hendry didn’t want to trade Mark DeRosa.  But he wanted to get more lefthanded and he had to make a business, not just a personnel, decision.  The only spots he could trade righthanded hitters from were shortstop, second base and catcher.  Ryan Theriot and Geovany Soto are both cheap, and the Cubs had Mike Fontenot to take over second.  He had to make that business decision and that meant trading DeRosa and not bringing back any big league salaries.  He added Milton Bradley to give them a switch hitter.  He had to find a lower cost alternative to Kerry Wood and he got Kevin Gregg.  He dumped Jason Marquis’ salary, but had to take on some salary in Luis Vizcaino.

At the time, Hendry probably thought this would be temporary.  The Cubs would get a new owner this summer and those guys would have money again.  Well, that was the plan, and the plan has gone kaput.

Truth is, the Cubs are not worth $900 million any more, if they ever really were.  The Ricketts have not been able to make the money work, and the odds of turning that around can’t be too good.  When they go back for sale, what will it yield?  $650 million?  $700 million.  There’s obvious incentive for Zell to make this work at $900M and he can’t do it.  That’s how bad things are right now.

This basically sentences the Cubs to an entire season of Tribune ownership, which means no salary additions, which means you’d better get used to seeing Bobby Scales, Andres Blanco, Jake Fox and the Jason Waddells of the world, that’s pretty much all there is to bring in.

The big money guys like Soriano, Dempster, Lee, Zambrano, Kosuke, Milton, Harden, and when he comes back E-ramis had better crank it up, because there is no cavalry on its way.

Honestly, with that much talent, you shouldn’t need one, but these Cubs look like they’re going to need one.

And if you really want to depress yourself, if (when) the Ricketts bid goes belly up, it means the Cubs are going to go through this into next season, too.

With that in mind, what if Zell looks at the Cubs and decides that if he’s stuck with them, they’d better “cut” payroll.  There’s not much they can do.  Most of the high paid guys (Z, Soriano, E-ramis, Lee) have no-trades.  Kosuke, Milton, Dempster and Harden don’t.  But Kosuke, Milton and Dempster probably make too much money to garner interest (it’s going to be tough to move anybody this season with more than this year left on their deals if they earn any real cash).  Harden could go if he was somewhat healthy.  But you could see Zell mandate Hendry cut salary that might force Jim to trade Ted Lilly.  Lilly has “no-trade protection” (as does Kosuke) but not complete no-trade protection.  There are teams he can be dealt to.

Cutting salary is probably far-fetched, but at this point, its more likely than adding salary is.

So get used to what Bruce Miles called the “Iowa Express” last night.  It’s here to stay.  Hell, you are probably guaranteed to see Neal Cotts again.

Yay?