FYI, Karabiner is incompatible with MacOS Sierra. There's a project (Karabiner-Elements) to replace its (and Seil's) functionality, but I don't believe it has feature parity yet: https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements
So, I basically don't mind CTRL right where it is. It doesn't bother me for the things I use it for.
For me, the two-handed combo of CTRL-[ is just a lot more work than the single-handed move of my ring finger to the ESC key. I don't have trouble getting my left hand back to the home row quickly after doing so either. Moving CTRL to Caps Lock would alleviate that some, perhaps, but I don't think it would be enough of an improvement to make me prefer CTRL-[ over Escape.
The layout is also symmetrical.