On Monday afternoon, Jed Hoyer held a Q&A session with Jon “Boog” Sciambi and season ticket holders at the Budweiser Brickhouse Tavern in Gallagher Way.

Among other topics, Sciambi asked Hoyer about the future — and using the “rebuild” label for what stage the Cubs are in now.

“I think people have wanted me to use that label to define what we’re doing,” Hoyer said. “What I’ve said repeatedly and if I haven’t done a good job of it, ultimately that’s on me to be able to articulate it. Last season, we were prepared to buy at the deadline. We wanted to do that. We were in first place at this point last season. We lost 11 games in a row. That pushed us out of contention.

“At that point, it was really clear we needed to really focus on the future. Once we made those moves, it became really imperative that when we’re caught between a decision for now or for the future that we should focus on the future to try to build a core of young players, to try to build something great again.”

Hoyer further explained his vision for the future of the Cubs and how the franchise is in a different spot now — in 2022 — than it was in 2011-12 when Hoyer and Theo Epstein were first getting situated in Chicago.

“Last time when we got here — and we didn’t use that word last time, I would add — in 2011, we came in here, the infrastructure of the Cubs had been sort of underinvested in,” Hoyer said. “We didn’t have the technology or the people or the processes to be a great organization. That’s not the case now. We’ve invested in all those things, thanks to the Ricketts. We have great people here, great processes. We’re always trying to get better.

“But as far as building up an entire organization, that’s not where we are. At this stage for us, it’s about building up a group of young players and then building around them. And there’s certainly things we can do better than we did last time. I think our building process last time went really as well as possible. There’s things we can do in the maintenance phase of that that we can certainly do better.

“I do see those as different processes. To me, it’s not about labeling it. It’s about talking about what are we trying to accomplish? What we’re trying to accomplish is building that really healthy organizational foundation of young players so that we can go forward and really be great.”