Lou Nucci knows all about Millburn’s rich baseball tradition. Afterall, he is in his 10th year with the Millers diamond program with this being his first season as the team’s head coach after being selected to take the reins handled by Brian Chapman the previous 14 seasons.
The 56-year-old Chapman, who was 291-114 with an outstanding .719 winning percentage during his decade and a half in Millerville, retired last June to become the athletic director at St. John Vianney in Holmdel.
He had guided Millburn to a pair of overall Group 4 state titles in 2015 and 2017 plus a North 2, Group 3 state sectional crown in 2023 with his last truly strong squad which finished 27-4 and featured Oakland A’s minor league prospect Steven Echavarria, who was one of the best pitchers Essex County high school baseball has seen in the past decade.
‘Chappy’ also directed the Millers to a pair of Greater Newark Tournament championships, including in Echavarria’s senior season in 2023.
“Coach Chapman was a great role model and it’s an honor to follow him as Millburn’s new head coach,” said Nucci. “It’s my job to help this program honor all the traditions that he set in place for me as a Hall of Fame coach.”
Nucci inherits a fairly young Millburn squad which returns three key veteran pitchers from last season’s 14-16 squad (4-6 in the Super Essex Conference-American Division) in crafty junior southpaw Leo Dalton and seniors Charlie Krasnove and Charlie Wall, along with a quartet of veterans in the everyday lineup with junior third baseman and No. 3 hitter Asher Holland, senior first baseman and No. 5 hitter Jonah Toubes, senior designated hitter/catcher Sawyer Stein, who bats cleanup, and junior catcher Holden Cohn, who hits sixth.
“Asher is a promising junior who is a strong hitter and solid third baseman who has been in the program since his freshman year and is one of the team leaders working well with our younger players,” said Nucci. “We like our pitching potential. We’re looking for big things from Leo Dalton who was strong a sophomore last year and has good location of his fast ball and keeps batters off balance with a sharp curve ball and his slider.”
Dalton was also Sideline Chatter’s runner-up as Essex County Newcomer of the Year in 2025.
Chapman had to deal with a couple of injuries to his pitching staff last spring, but he found that he could always count on some solid work from his young left-hander who filled a huge void in terms of innings and productivity. The very promising Dalton finished 3-4 on the mound as a precocious sophomore with 47 1/3 IP while allowing 33 hits, while walking 14 and recording 40 K’s to go along with a 1.77 ERA.
Krasnove was effective as a sophomore working 34 2/3 innings with a 2.83 ERA for an 11-16 Millers squad (4-8 in the SEC-American) in 2024; however, his recovery from an injury limited his availability in 2025 when he threw only 15 innings.
Wall has been a workhorse on the hill during the last two seasons tossing 47 inning last spring with a strong 1.94 ERA.
Nucci is glad to have some pitching depth to support Dalton, who could emerge as an ace.
“Charlie Krasnove is a 4-year starter who is big and physical, will also get some reps in the outfield and is another veteran leader for us,” the rookie head mentor said. “Charlie Wall is another very reliable and experienced pitcher for us.”
Holland got off to a strong start in the hitting department in the Millers’ season-opening 12-2 win vs. Freehold Boro on Saturday, March 28, when he went 3-for-4 with 3 runs, a home run and 5 RBI. Cohn went 2-for-2 with 2 RBI.
The Millers had their difficulties containing a potent West Essex lineup in an 8-4 loss at West Essex in the Tuesday, March 31, SEC opener for both teams.
“We have some experience and our goal is to continue the same storied success and tradition that Millburn baseball is known for,” said Nucci, a 36-year-old Huntington, N.Y. native who played his college baseball at Springfield (Mass.) and teaches physical education at Cranford High School. “We know what it takes to compete in our very challenging conference and our players have been working really hard, including during this past off-season, and are now fully focused on preparing for each and every game that is in front of us.”
Millburn is scheduled to host St. Mary’s of Rutherford, 11 a.m., Saturday (April 4) before back-to-back SEC-American Division contests with Livington, 4 p.m., Monday, April 6, on the road at The Oval, before returning home to host the Lancers, 4 p.m., Wednesday, April 8.
NOTES- Nucci and his wife Marisa have four children. She is a former gymnast at Johnson High School in Clark and the couple first met at Springfield College when both were undergraduates and Nucci was a first baseman on the Division III team’s baseball team. Nucci played his high school baseball at Harborfields in Huntington which is in Suffolk County on Long Island…The new-look 2026 Millburn baseball coaching staff includes former Cranford standout Matt Chapman, Brian’s son, as a pitching coach, along with Millburn alum and hitting coach Sam Finkelsstein, former Binghamton (N.Y.) University player and Cranford teacher Pete Bregarner as a hybrid pitching and hitting coach and Mike Pollack as another assistant coach….The now retired Chapman has an interesting background in that he isa former sportswriter with Dorf’s Feature Service, a subsidiary of the old Star Ledger newspaper. He then became a special education teacher at Millburn and retired from that post in June. His high school baseball coaching career was jet-started with a longtime stint at Cranford as the right-man as a top assistant for longtime friend and former college teammate (at FDU) under Dennis McCaffery where he was also a successful head coach of the Cougars’ girls basketball team for eight seasons, including winning a Union County Tournament title in 2005.
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