MILWAUKEE -- Ask his father how Corbin Burnes went from being one of the smaller kids on the diamond in Bakersfield, Calif., to being the reigning National League Cy Young Award winner and a two-time All-Star, and the answer is complicated.

There’s natural athleticism. His competitiveness and desire. A late growth spurt. An analytical mind. Toughness bordering on stubbornness.

• MLB All-Star Game presented by Mastercard: Tuesday on FOX

And then there’s the chance meeting with a Hall of Famer that Rick Burnes believes played a prominent role in his son setting his sights on the Major Leagues.

“This really resonated with me,” Burnes’ dad said in a telephone conversation. “His brother [Tyler] is two years younger than Corbin, and we didn’t have Little League. We all played Cal Ripken Jr. Baseball. One year, his brother made it to the Cal Ripken World Series, and Corbin, who was 14, came along. He was our assistant coach, because he couldn’t stand not being part of it.

“So Cal Ripken Jr. made it a point to sit down with every team that made it to the World Series and gave them 30 minutes or an hour to talk and answer questions. He looks 6-foot-6. He’s a big man. But he looks at these kids and says, ‘When I was a kid, I might have just snuck onto this team, but I would have never seen the field. You guys are so much better than I was at your age. So don’t hold back. If you think you’ve got it, go fight for it.”

Rick Burnes thinks that message resonated with Corbin, who was undersized but eager. In high school, he pressed his parents to attend a showcase at Stanford University in which Corbin drew little notice. But he kept going. He pitched for St. Mary’s College. He went to the Cape Cod League. He hit a long-awaited growth spurt. Scouts started taking notice.

Rick Burnes will never forget the day a veteran scout approached him and said, “Buckle up, Mr. Burnes, you’ve got quite a ride ahead of you.”

Corbin, it seems, was right.

Baseball would be his profession.

“It seems late,” Rick Burnes said, “but that’s when it really became a reality to me.”

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Corbin Burnes won't pitch in the All-Star Game this year. He announced Sunday that he'll use the break to rest instead, having mulled that decision all week with Brewers manager Craig Counsell and come to the conclusion that it's wiser to prepare to lead the Brewers into the second half on Friday at home against the Rockies. Miles Mikolas of the Cardinals took his spot.

"I loved throwing in the [All-Star] Game last year. I got to throw two innings in the game. It was a blast," Burnes said Sunday in San Francisco. "It was something I was looking forward to doing it again this year. But the more we put our heads together, it was more important that we were healthy and good to go into a deep postseason run this year. The way we were trending, I was going to be at 200 innings at the end of September without any postseason yet.

"You kind of have to sacrifice the short term of it, looking ahead to the long term. I want to make sure we're healthy and I put myself in the best position to help my team win."

Burnes was asked whether there is anything going on physically that influenced this decision. No, he said. This is purely a case of bring proactive. He knows the history of pitchers who have exceeded their previous high for innings.

It was just the sort of logic the Burnes family has always applied to athletics.

His dad liked sports but was never as good an athlete, he says, as both of his sons became. Instead, Rick Burnes was fascinated by the process. It’s what led him to business school and a career in agriculture, working in almonds, pistachios, grapes and every other crop coming out of California’s Central Valley. He instilled in his boys the adage, “What gets measured gets improved,” a business philosophy attributed to management theorist Peter Drucker.

Burnes and his boys applied the concept to sports.

“We always measured,” Rick Burnes said. “There were times when our baseball teams would go a whole season without losing a game, we’d destroy teams. But that’s not what we learn from. We learn from measuring and then improving. That philosophy always resonated with Corbin.”

The other sports were fun to Corbin, Rick Burnes says, but baseball was always more than that. A passion. And the concept of measuring progress resonates to this day. Corbin Burnes keeps a journal of his “execution percentage,” re-watching each pitch of every start and grading whether he threw the pitch the way he wanted to and put it precisely where he wanted to. The result in the box score doesn’t always match the grade in Burnes’ book.

It was that stubborn adherence to process, as much as rejiggering his arsenal in the Brewers’ pitching lab and undergoing Lasik surgery and extensive mental skills training, that helped Burnes persevere through a 2019 season in which he posted the highest ERA (8.82) of any pitcher who worked as many as his 49 innings.

In 2020, Burnes flirted with the NL ERA title and finished sixth in NL Cy Young Award balloting. In ‘21, he led MLB’s qualified pitchers in ERA, adjusted ERA, FIP, strikeouts per nine innings; combined with fellow ‘22 Brewers All-Star Josh Hader on the second no-hitter in franchise history; and became the third Brewers pitcher to win his league’s Cy Young Award. This season, Burnes has made every start and his ERA is even lower, at 2.14. He was named to the All-Star team along with Hader, who opted to give up his spot and will spend the break at home with his newborn son, and set-up man Devin Williams, who was added to the NL squad on Sunday.

And yet, Burnes still doesn’t sound particularly satisfied.

“I don’t like to look at the results,” he said. “For me, it’s all about sticking to my process and my routine and how I can execute pitches. Thus far this first half, as far as executing pitches, it’s not near what we did in the first half last year. I definitely think there’s still room to grow.

“That’s obviously the exciting part. Knowing we’re a first-place team and the season had gone pretty well up to this point, it’s exciting looking forward to the second half.”

That outlook doesn’t surprise his dad.

“The way I explain Corbin to people is he’s often happy, but he’s never satisfied,” Rick Burnes said. “That always gives you room to be better. Obviously, that means the tolerances get tighter and tighter. That’s where Corbin is. He realizes there is opportunity here and that’s what keeps him going.”

Dad is enjoying the ride.

“Even today when I think about him making his second All-Star team, winning the Cy Young, it’s hard to get your head around it,” Rick Burnes said. “It makes me flash back to seeing a little kid who could barely fill out a pair of baseball pants and a jersey, trying to find a glove that wouldn’t fall off his hand. It’s incredible.

“He was not the pedigreed athlete growing up. Seeing him accomplish these things, knowing where he came from and how he built it, it’s crazy.”