Silva reportedly leaving Nicholls to become head coach at Arkansas State
Mike Silva is leaving Nicholls to become the new head baseball coach at Arkansas State, according to Kendall Rodgers of D1Baseball.
Silva replaces Tommy Raffo, who served as the Red Wolves’ baseball coach for 16 seasons. Raffo’s record at the school was 382-447-2.
Silva has Arkansas connections, having served as an assistant coach for two years at Arkansas-Little Rock.
He spent three years as an assistant coach at Louisiana Tech before being named Nicholls’ head coach in 2022.
Inheriting a team that had gone 21-34, including 16-24 in the Southland Conference, Silva guided the Colonels to a winning record in 2022 at 26-25 overall, including 12-12 in the SLC.
Nicholls went 34-24, including 15-9 in the Southland with the Colonels capturing both the SLC’s regular-season and conference tournament titles.
The Colonels qualified for the NCAA Regional, falling 4-3 to Alabama and 14-6 to Boston College in the Tuscaloosa Regional.
Nicholls went 38-22, including 16-8 in the Southland in 2024 while repeating as Southland Conference tournament champions.
The Colonels were the No. 3 seed in the Corvallis Regional, losing 13-12 to UC Irvine and 3-0 to Tulane.
Following his college days as a catcher at Northwestern Oklahoma State University in 2003, Silva split time the next two years as a college assistant at Charendon College in Texas and playing in an independent league.
Silva spent a year as an assistant at Bethany College before getting out of baseball for two years. He returned to Charendon, first as an assistant for a semester before becoming the head coach at the age of 27.
He served as the head coach at Galveston College from 2010-2012 and as an assistant at Texas State for the next three years.
After a year working as a scout for the San Diego Padres, Silva returned to the college ranks at Arkansas-Little Rock before moving on to Louisiana Tech and then Nicholls.
Arkansas State was 21-32-1, including 7-22-1 in the Sun Belt in 2024.
