Sports

Villar pitches Thomas to upset of GW, within win of sharing division crown

Norman Thomas has remained under the radar this spring by design. The team’s motto is “nice and quiet.”

The Tigers will need a new one for the playoffs – after topping defending PSAL Class A champion George Washington, 4-3, in Manhattan A East baseball Thursday afternoon they’ll be marked men.

Junior Garbin Villar allowed just three hits and struck out two in a complete-game victory and Jeffrey Ledesma and Paul Garcia each homered for Thomas, which snapped a personal five-game losing streak to GW.

“It’s a big one for us,” first-year coach Luis Monell said. “It’s exactly what we wanted going into the playoffs, to have momentum. The kids know they can play with anybody in the city. We’re gonna ride this momentum and see how far we can take this.”

With a win Saturday over one-win West 50th Street Campus, it would share the Manhattan A East crown, the first time the Manhattan school has won the division title since 2009, the same year it won its first city crown.

“We’re definitely happy, but we still have a lot more to do, a lot more to accomplish,” Monell said.

Villar was brilliant, limiting the potent Trojans over seven brilliant innings after they battered Ledesma, the staff ace, for seven hits and eight runs in a commanding 10-3 win last Friday.

“He’s the type of kids everything he throws moves,” Monell said of Villar who picked up his fifth league win and lowered his ERA to 2.08. “He’s the one pitcher on our staff who will throw inside to any hitter no matter who they are. He has a filthy two-seamer that runs into hitters’ hands. I’ve never seen so many grounds balls hit to the left side of the infield.”

Norman Thomas led 1-0 until the two teams combined for six runs in a wild seventh inning. Garcia hit a solo shot off GW starter Edwin Corniel and Ledesma followed with a two-run bomb off reliever Reynaldo Hernandez.

Thanks to errors by second baseman Francis Vasquez and shortstop Keven Rodriguez to start the seventh, the Trojans (14-2) rallied for three runs. But Villar got out of the jam with a few groundball outs to cap the unexpected victory. A win Saturday would be significant for Thomas (13-2) on many levels. Few expected the Tigers to share the division crown with George Washington and even less thought they would get a high seed – a victory Saturday would ensure both.

“It would put us on the same pedestal with all the other top teams in the PSAL, the teams that everyone predicted would be at the top,” Monell said. “It lets everyone know baseball isn’t played on paper, but on the field. We showed that today. It’s a message to the rest of the PSAL the playoffs aren’t going to be about what everyone expected.”

zbraziller@nypost.com