My 2019 MBP has a touch bar and a physical escape key, so at least some models did have one. I agree not having it would make the touch bar way worse. As it is I don't mind it.

i also found that weird when I got it but I got used to it quickly. It's not my main work machine but I use it for a couple of hours every evening and stopped thinking about it. I do sometimes accidentally bring up Siri when I mean to hit the backspace key.