College of the Southwest Birmingham's college baseball coaching career began in the late 1980s, when he was the head coach at
NAIA school
College of the Southwest and its new baseball program from 1988 to 1989. There, he had a 53–73 overall record. New Mexico had 30-win seasons in 2008 and 2009 and reached its first NCAA tournament under Birmingham in 2010, when the team went 38–22 and finished second in the Mountain West. The Lobos defeated
Stanford in the opening game of the
Fullerton Regional, then lost consecutive games to
Minnesota and
Cal State Fullerton. New Mexico returned to the NCAA tournament in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2016, winning the MWC Tournament in 2011, 2012 and 2016. Birmingham's Lobos won 7 different championships in 14 years at UNM. Birmingham was named the Mountain West Coach of the Year three times (2012, 2013, 2017). During the 2013 season Birmingham earned the 1,000th win of his career when the Lobos defeated the Air Force Falcons 19–5. Known as one of the top hitting coaches in the nation, Birmingham has led the Lobos to seven top-10 national finishes in batting average in 10 seasons at UNM, including an NCAA-best .334 in 2013 and .363 in 2009. He also coached Justin Howard to an NCAA-leading .456 average in 2010 and D.J. Peterson to a .520 on-base percentage in 2012. In 2013 in addition to leading the nation in batting, UNM also ranked first in scoring (8.3 runs per game), on-base percentage (.422), hits (724), slugging (.504) and doubles per game (2.53). Between 2008 and 2017, New Mexico has had 32
MLB draft selections, including future major leaguer
Bobby LaFromboise in 2008 and MLB's Silver Slugger award-winning catcher Mitch Garver in 2013. The program's highest selection was
D. J. Peterson, the 12th overall pick of the first round in 2013. In all, seven Lobos were chosen in the
2013 draft. On April 18, 2021, Birmingham announced that he would retire after the season. He retired with a cumulative 432–341–8 record, the most wins in program history. ==Head coaching record==