It's very easy to remap caps lock to escape.
There are many valid criticisms of the touch bar macs, losing one key in particular is pretty low on the list.
The whole reason to remap caps lock to ctrl is that ctrl is in a terrible location.
You can create a rule to change caps lock to control if pressed with other keys, else escape if pressed alone.
I have no affiliation with it, just ran into this issue myself and it solved it for me.
Instead we have Karabiner Elements which has been of mixed stability in my experience.
Many times I've had it completely disable the internal keyboard on my late 2013 MBP to the point where I have to plug in a USB keyboard to recover or if on the road do a force power reset.