CHICAGO — Ever been yelled at?

Ever been yelled at while trying to concentrate on a task that requires precision? Or amid a crowd of strangers? Ever felt your ears burn crimson as everyone turns to look at you, wondering what you did to deserve it? Even if the answer is nothing at all?

Logan Webb got yelled at in front of 15,980 people in the third inning Wednesday afternoon. The stream of invective emanated from the Chicago White Sox dugout. The aggrieved party was leadoff hitter Tim Anderson, who had struck out when he backed out of the box as Webb delivered a pitch. Webb didn’t think he quick-pitched. Anderson had a different opinion. And he kept expressing it throughout Webb’s four-pitch confrontation with Luis Robert Jr.

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By the time Webb struck out Robert, he had heard enough. He yelled back at Anderson. (Imagine “Enough already!” — with a bit less gentility.)

“I’m not going to listen to that s— for a bunch of pitches,” Webb said.

Anderson was ejected, but the White Sox didn’t turn down the volume on Webb. They used an opposite-field approach while peppering him for four runs on nine hits in five innings, then tacked on another base-hit-fueled rally against Sean Hjelle while handing the Giants a 7-3 loss on the South Side.

Anderson didn’t address reporters, but others in the White Sox clubhouse confirmed the leadoff hitter felt Webb was pushing the pace beyond what he considered acceptable. His reaction might have seemed out of the blue, but it was something that was bound to happen this season as pitchers seek ways to turn the pitch clock into an advantage.

Anderson had called timeout earlier in the at-bat; a batter cannot call timeout a second time in a plate appearance without being charged an automatic strike. The Giants discussed it with their pitchers in spring training: A hitter is already uncomfortable when they call timeout. They can’t call timeout again. So keep making them feel uncomfortable, whether it means you hold the ball a bit longer or begin your delivery as soon as they look up.

That’s precisely what Webb did.

“You can see we were both looking at each other,” Webb said. “I was on the mound; (catcher) Roberto (Pérez) gave me the PitchCom sign. (Anderson) was looking at me. I even stopped halfway through my windup — kind of stopped; I don’t really know if I did or not — but I thought time was going to be called. At that point, I’m not going to step off and get a balk or a ball called on myself. So I kind of lobbed one in.”

Tim Anderson got ejected. He was upset after this pitch and kept talking from the dugout. Weird one.

— Alex Pavlovic (@PavlovicNBCS) April 5, 2023

Anderson complained to plate umpire D.J. Reyburn as he walked back to the dugout. A bit later, after Reyburn ejected Anderson, play was suspended briefly as Anderson continued to shout at Webb before exiting the dugout. Anderson appeared to gesture in Webb’s direction while yelling “motherf—er” and calling him “soft.”

Tim Anderson was NOT HAPPY the umpire didn't grant him a timeout 😬

— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) April 5, 2023

Yet Webb came to Anderson’s defense as he spoke in a hushed postgame clubhouse.

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“I don’t necessarily think he should’ve gotten tossed,” Webb said. “He was talking to me. He wasn’t talking to the umpires.”

Either the White Sox are a sensitive bunch or the Giants are proving to be especially adept at getting under an opponent’s skin. There was another brief exchange in the series opener here Monday after Anthony DeSclafani threw a 3-0 slider to Andrew Vaughn that generated a few choice comments along with a tapper back to the mound.

“If you don’t say something nice, I’ll say something back,” DeSclafani said.

The Giants probably won’t spend any more time thinking about Anderson or Vaughn or their grievances. The White Sox gave them plenty of other feedback that should be more concerning. Namely, they made Webb look hittable six days after he struck out 12 in six innings at Yankee Stadium on Opening Day. The nine hits matched the second most Webb has allowed in a start in his career. And the White Sox didn’t do their damage on the second or third pass through the lineup. They were ready at the outset, collecting four hits in a two-run first inning that ended when center fielder Mike Yastrzemski threw out Vaughn attempting to score from second base on Gavin Sheets’ single.

“They had a very different approach than a team like the Yankees,” Webb said. “It just seemed like they were trying to go the other way. I kind of stayed on the offspeed a lot. They made a good adjustment. I didn’t do a very good job mixing some stuff up.”

The opposite-field approach was precisely what the White Sox drew up.

“He’s definitely unique. You don’t see many guys with that much movement and sink on all his pitches,” said White Sox outfielder Andrew Benintendi, who snuck two singles up the middle. “So our plan was to get him up in the zone. Or at least make (the pitch) start up. And then try not to do too much. If you try to pull the ball on him, it’s easy to roll over because there’s so much movement. So see something up and stay through it.”

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Webb said he didn’t plan to throw more changeups (30 of 81) than any other pitch. That’s just how the game unspooled and how far the White Sox backed him into a corner.

“That’s a really good pitcher,” Sheets said. “We jumped on him well. You have to be kind of stubborn with him. You have to hunt your area.”

Welcome to Major League Baseball in 2023, when limitations on infield shifts mean you can execute a contact-driven approach against an opposing ace and get rewarded for it.

“Oh, a hundred percent,” Benintendi said. “It’s great. Especially for a lefty hitter like me. You can take the four-hole hits away. But give us the ones up the middle. That’s a hit for me again.”

Maybe not if the pitcher knocks it down. Webb didn’t have to study video to learn one immediate lesson Wednesday: He has to think differently about how to field his position. He passed up a chance to get a glove on Benintendi’s single in the first inning. He didn’t realize that he was the fielder most capable of making a play.

“I’m so used to letting those go,” Webb said. “I think for sure I could’ve gotten to it easily. I ducked out of the way. There’s usually someone behind me.”

Instead, Benintendi’s hit, which had an expected average of .200, snuck through the middle like a pinball, with shortstop Brandon Crawford and second baseman David Villar the two extended flippers. Crawford and Villar made diving attempts and nearly knocked heads as they converged.

These were the kinds of seeing-eye hits the Giants envisioned in the spring when they had conversations with their pitchers about their two-strike approach. In some cases, they sought to arm them with another offering or design tweak that would allow them to miss a few more bats. Webb’s 12-strikeout performance on Opening Day was encouraging on that front and might have offset any glum feelings over the two home runs he allowed in a 5-0 loss.

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Except now Webb has allowed eight runs in his first two starts. And there was no similar upshot to his outing on the South Side.

“First one, I got beat by the long ball,” Webb said. “Today it was good hitting. I don’t think my stuff was as good today. But it wasn’t that much of a difference.”

Webb probably won’t lose too many games like he did in New York, on the strength of a rare pair of home runs against him. But when a team takes a contact-minded approach? And when balls in play aren’t turned into outs? Those are the briar-patch games that could prove especially thorny.

And not just for Webb, either. The Giants have a staff full of ground-ball pitchers who use seam-shifted movement to keep the ball off the barrel. It worked well enough for DeSclafani in his six shutout innings in Monday’s series opener here. But balls in play will always introduce some element of randomness.

One of those elements is the Giants defense, which has appeared much cleaner in a small sample thus far — especially at the corners, where first baseman LaMonte Wade Jr. and Villar, the primary third baseman, put in a ton of defensive work over the offseason.

But the infield defense broke down behind Hjelle, who gave up four two-strike hits in a three-run seventh inning. Crawford was charged with an error when he clanked a backhanded attempt to field Elvis Andrus’ grounder. Then, with runners at first and second, Benintendi hit another problematic roller up the middle. Crawford ranged to field it but took an extra shuffle step before he got off a throw. Benintendi beat it out for an infield hit that loaded the bases and set up the rest of the inning.

“That one wasn’t Crawford’s fault,” said Andrus, who has long admired the Giants shortstop.

Andrus watched the play unfold and noticed Crawford might have hesitated because he expected to flip to Villar for the force at second base. But Villar was going for the ball, too. And Villar was only playing second base because Thairo Estrada was a pregame scratch. Estrada reported lingering discomfort in his calf after he fouled a pitch off it Monday.

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So Giants manager Gabe Kapler was left to sing a familiar refrain after the game.

“We got the ball on the ground,” Kapler said. “We weren’t able to convert enough of those into outs.”

Meanwhile, Giants hitters continued to run hot and cold. They struck out 13 times Wednesday and are up to 63 strikeouts in five games; their average of 12.6 strikeouts per game is the most in the major leagues. They also have faced perhaps the two best strikeout pitchers in the American League on this season-opening trip after drawing Gerrit Cole in New York and Dylan Cease on Wednesday. They drew five walks against Cease (Wade accounted for three of them from the leadoff spot) and drove him from the game after five innings. And they drew nine walks all told. But they plated only one of them, and that came in the ninth inning when the game was a mostly settled affair.

The Giants believe the strength of their offense will be their ability to make consistently hard contact. But first they have to make that contact. When they most needed to put a ball in play, they failed to do so. Yastrzemski struck out looking to strand the bases loaded in the third inning. Joc Pederson, who hit a ball so hard in the third inning that it tore through Vaughn’s first baseman’s mitt, fouled off a 3-1 pitch down the middle before striking out to strand two runners in the fifth.

It was already breezy enough on the South Side. The outfield flags stiffened in 40 mph winds that blew straight in. It wasn’t an ideal day to swing for the fences. Better to spray the ball around instead.

The White Sox did that better Wednesday. That much was loud and clear.

(Photo: Matt Marton / USA Today)