I'm in your corner on that one, TR.
Many fans of many teams passionately believe that their home nine is unfairly treated by MLB umpires. Combine that with all the data available these days, and I cannot fathom how we have not seen numerous public studies on the questsion.
We have recorded data for actual pitch locations. We have recorded data for actual ball strike calls correlating to those actual pitch locations. For each pitch, for each call, we have the umpire identified along with the pitcher, the batter, the opposing teams, and the game context. Any student of statistics given access to this data clearly is able to design a study that would reveal any systematic abuse. Now I don't frequent sophisticated statistical sites, but you can bet there would have been enough chatter about such a study that I would become aware of it.
Matt would know why this situation exists, I assume, having been employed in the past by an MLB team as a statistician. He may not be free to comment, I don't know.
I DO know it would be in MLB's interest to suppress any such discussion if unfair treatment is present, though I have no way of knowing if there is any active effort on their part to actually suppress it. The same motivation exists for MLB umpires. Conversely, if the data shows that there is no such treatment, wouldn't MLB be falling all over itself to quickly publicize that fact?
This goes along with the complete of serious public discussion of automating strike zones (apart from on fan forums like this), which I find equally puzzling.
I suppose I'm as susceptible to conspiracy theories as the next guy, but this ought not to be even an arena for such theories. It ought to be so easily demonstrable.