My thought exactly, but the whole point of having a starter project is that it is ready for use.
If it's not that big of a deal, please try and modify Mern-starter to accomodate it.
I know babel parameters very well. It's not about that. it's about deciding how to compile the server with babel and the current folder structure while having webpack compiling the client.
The current "build" script refers only to the client compilation by webpack. It compiles it into '/static/dist/' folder. Where would you suggest to compile and run the express server using babel-cli?