By Jeremy Harness

SAN FRANCISCO – Tim Lincecum’s evolution from a Cy Young Award-winning thrower into a crafty veteran pitcher was on full display Wednesday night.

Coming off an underwhelming outing, the right-hander turned in a masterful performance against an always-tough Los Angeles Dodgers lineup Wednesday night, tossing seven shutout innings and giving up only three hits to lead the Giants to a 4-0 win at AT&T Park.

Lincecum now has not allowed a single run in the past 22 innings at home, and in the process, by striking out four batters on Wednesday, he surpassed Carl Hubbell to take fourth place on the all-time Giants strikeouts list.

In the meantime, the Giants continued a remarkable turnaround. After spending much of the first month of the season at the bottom of the National League West, they have slowly crept their way back into the thick of things to the point that they now only sit 2½ games back of the division-leading Dodgers.

“He’s got a lot of confidence going, and it shows,” manager Bruce Bochy said. “He’s in a good rhythm, too. You look at his delivery, and it’s really consistent, especially here at home. He’s throwing strikes, he’s using his fastball well, going up and down with it, and he’s got really nice secondary pitches he can throw at any time.”

The contest started off as a nice duel between Lincecum (4-2) and Dodgers lefty Brett Anderson, who himself entered Wednesday with a respectable 3.50 earned-run average, as the two hurlers threw zeroes at each other all the way into the sixth inning.

Lincecum’s trek did not go without some trials, however. He did get into some trouble to start the fifth, as catcher Yasmani Grandal led off the inning with a double into the gap in right-center. He didn’t exactly help himself by uncorking a wild pitch to allow Grandal to get to third, but he rebounded very nicely.

He got Andre Ethier to ground out and Juan Uribe to pop out while keeping Grandal at third, and after surrendering a walk to his pitching counterpart, Brett Anderson, he coaxed a weak grounder to first out of Joc Pederson to keep the Dodgers off the scoreboard.

The Giants got a leadoff double of their own in the sixth, courtesy of Buster Posey, and for a moment, it didn’t look like they would get a run across, either. Hunter Pence got Posey to third with a soft grounder to second, but Justin Maxwell grounded out sharply to keep Posey at third with two out.

Andrew Susac drew a walk to keep the inning alive, and Brandon Crawford singled to left just in front of a diving Alex Guerrero to bring Posey in and give the Giants a 1-0 lead.

Angel Pagan kept that lead intact by making a leaping catch at the center-field wall to take at least an extra-base hit from Grandal in the seventh.

“We’re doing a really nice job of catching the ball, and that has made a difference, too,” Bochy said. “The defense has been really good recently.”

Then the Giants teed off on the Dodgers’ pitching in the bottom half, an inning that was capped off when Posey lined one just over the wall in left-center off reliever Yimi Garcia for a two-run homer that boosted their lead to 4-0.

Posey’s work wasn’t done just yet, however. Playing first base to give Susac some time behind the plate, he tracked down a pop-up from Pederson in the eighth that was headed into the visiting dugout and plucked the ball in front of the Dodgers’ bench.